Mask of Nobility

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “Help is help. It’s always welcome.” Agatha hitched the bag on her back into a more comfortable position.

  “They could move on before we get there,” Bronwen pointed out, as they walked down the gentle slope. The dale between them and road was a patchwork of emerald paddocks, darker hawthorn hedges and three white-washed cottages. Black-faced Yorkshire sheep cropped under the warm noonday sun, their dirty woolen backs white flecks scattered over the fields, creating a tweed effect.

  The warmth and the cloudless sky had driven Agatha to insist upon her long walk today. There were few warm days like this left in the year. Bronwen had learned to trust Agatha’s weather-sense and had capitulated when Agatha insisted on walking despite the stiffness of her joints and the ache in her back.

  Agatha showed no sign of stiffness now as they negotiated the slope. “If they’re gone when we get there, then our way won’t be blocked anymore, will it?” she said in her wavering voice.

  Bronwen couldn’t argue with Agatha’s reasoning. She saved her breath for the walk, for Agatha increased their pace until they were both striding across the shorn grass, scattering sheep as they went. Agatha sometimes surprised Bronwen with displays of energy more suited to a far younger woman. Her mind was always young and modern.

  The carriage remained where it was, even as they climbed the slope toward the rutted road. As they drew closer, Bronwen recognized the vehicle. It was one of the local hacks, who plied his trade between Northallerton town, where the train from York passed through, and locations in the valley. The carriage was listing to one side.

  As most local passengers walked to Northallerton and saved their coins, it meant whoever had rented the hack was a stranger to the district.

  Bronwen could see why the coach was motionless. The far side wheel lay on the ground and the driver was fussing with the axle. The horse stood with hips cocked, his nose to the ground, nipping at the tufts of grass between the tracks.

  There were no passengers walking about. Had they insisted upon remaining inside the carriage, even on a day like this? How odd.

  Agatha eased herself under the last hawthorn hedge. Bronwen wriggled through the thin opening, then tugged her skirt back into place. She tossed her hair back over her shoulder.

  Agatha nodded toward the driver.

  Bronwen moved over to where he was bent over the end of the axle. “Did you lose the pin?”

  The driver straightened, startled. He swore, bringing his hand to his chest.

  Bronwen kicked at the wheel. “It looks whole.”

  The man glared at her from under his thick, silver brows. “Bloody pin sheered right off. If I can get the other end out, then I can put a temporary pin in place and be on my way.” He glanced from Bronwen to Agatha, who was hovering near the rear corner of the carriage. “Or I might be if you two’d be men. How on earth I’m supposed to get the wheel back on…”

  “One thing at a time,” Bronwen told him. “Get the remains of the pin out first.”

  He glared at her. He looked as though he was building up to a pithy reply.

  “Where are your passengers?” Bronwen asked, deflecting his ire. Through the leaning window, she could see the carriage was empty.

  The driver scowled again and jerked his head toward the trees on the other side of the road. “He be inside, taking…well, a moment to himself, so to speak.”

  “Just the one, then. Well, let’s look at the pin to start.”

  Agatha tugged on Bronwen’s skirt. She turned her chin, toward the woods.

  Bronwen heard the cracking and crunching of someone heavy moving through them. He was breathing hard. Harder than was justified for traversing a thin copse of ash trees that had lost most of their leaves.

  Bronwen let her mouth curl down. He must be a London fop, unused to more exercise than lifting his brandy glass and knife and fork.

  The man gasped. It was not a sound of exertion, but one of pain.

  Bronwen started forward, toward the point where his noisy progress told her he would emerge from the trees. As she got closer, he shouldered his way through the bare branches and fir trees, then staggered onto the verge at the side of the road.

  He was a big man. That was the single impression Bronwen received before focusing upon his hand. He held the wrist tightly with the other hand, his fingers stretched taut.

  Bronwen ran to him. “Let me see.” She reached for his hand, intending to push the white, stiff cuff and thick worsted jacket sleeve out of the way.

  “It burns!” he breathed and dug the fingers of his other hand into the skin over the back of the injured one.

  Bronwen saw the telltale rash. Stinging nettle. Yes, he was in pain.

  She looked through the trees, searching for the big, broad leaves of a dock plant and spotted one at the foot of an ash. “Agatha, the dock plant. Would you mind?”

  Agatha nodded and stepped into the trees to harvest a leaf.

  Bronwen returned her attention to the man’s hand. He scratched with the other fingers. She slapped his hand away. “Don’t do that.”

  His gaze met hers. Blue eyes, open wide in surprise. A blue that nature only provided not long before the sky turned to night black. “I beg your pardon?” he said, shocked.

  “You’ll just make it worse, if you scratch. Hold your breath for moment and leave it alone.” She took his wrist and bent it, turning his hand over to see the palm and the underside of the fingers, looking for more burrs. “Did you brush your hand against the nettle when you were walking?”

  “I must have. I don’t remember. My hand suddenly burned. It is the most excruciating…what is that?” he finished sharply, looking at the moist, green leaf Agatha held out to Bronwen.

  “Relief,” Bronwen told him, taking the leaf.

  “Another plant?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she turned his hand back over and wrapped the big leaf over the rash. There were no burrs left in his skin to remove. It must have been the lightest of contacts.

  Bronwen held the leaf down with her fingers for a moment and watched him.

  His expression was one of bewilderment and dismay. Then the dock leaf worked. She watched relief and growing awareness fill his face. His eyes met hers once more. “The pain is fading.”

  “Yes.”

  “That is extraordinary.”

  “Not really.” She tapped the leaf. “Here, you can hold it in place. Leave it there for as long as you can.” She let go of his wrist and braced herself for the usual suspicion and fear to settle into his eyes. Witch was the least of the epithets leveled at her in the past. People didn’t trust what they didn’t understand.

  His gaze shifted from her to Agatha. For a heartbeat she saw Agatha as a stranger would: An old woman with long, stringy gray hair, a wrinkled face and few teeth. A back bent from carrying burdens far beyond what any woman should bear. And a patience and immoveable will rising from a long lifetime lived alone.

  Bronwen squared her shoulders, ready to spring to Agatha’s defense. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  The man looked at the dock leaf once more. “What is in the leaf?” he asked. “Something that counters the nettle sting, clearly, but what? What is the effective ingredient? Do you know?”

  Bronwen’s surprise left her speechless.

  His interested faded. “Unless it is merely an old wives’ tale you have remembered, that happens to work?”

  The dismissive note whipped Bronwen into responding. “There is an acid compound in dock plants.”

  “Not a base?” he replied, his interest lifting once more. “I’d have thought that to counter such a sting, a base would be needed.”

  “It’s not a sting. It’s a burn. Mild acids alleviate that pain. If I’d had vinegar to hand, I could have used that, instead.”

  “Then you know your chemicals,” he replied.

  “As you do, apparently,” she shot back.

  For a moment, they looked at each other.

  He had thick, golde
n blonde hair above the blue eyes and was clean-shaven. His clothes were fine gentlemen’s garments, with a hint of European tailoring. His shoulders were wide, which matched his height and the size of his hand. The wrist she had glimpsed beneath the cuff was strong, too, which made him far more physical a man than the elegant suit and overcoat and bespoke tailoring suggested.

  His square chin dipped. “I confess I am at the outer limits of my knowledge of chemicals. I suspect you know more than I. I would not have thought to find a complimentary plant to counter the first one.”

  “Well, using dock plants is an old wives’ tale,” Bronwen admitted. “I wanted to know why it worked, so I learned.”

  He nodded. It was a small movement. “Because knowledge is how the world becomes a better place.”

  “I suppose, yes. I haven’t thought of it that way.”

  “I have.” His gaze was steady.

  “Ah! Got the bastard,” the driver cried. A sharp ringing of metal punctuated his exclamation.

  He bent and picked up the sheered pin from beneath the sagging axle and tossed it into the trees and rubbed his hands together, pleased. “I’ve got a couple of railway dog spikes in the box back here, that I picked up around the station. One of those will do nicely.” He headed for the back of the carriage and Bronwen heard the box creak open and the driver rummage in the gear inside.

  She bent and picked up the edge of the wheel and brought it up onto its edge, then rolled it closer to the carriage. “Agatha, you must thread it onto the axle. I’m stronger than you.”

  Agatha sidled past the man and put herself in front of the wheel and nodded.

  Bronwen let it go and moved to the rear of the carriage. The driver straightened up, the thick metal spike in his hand. She nodded. “Is that why you kept them?”

  “Never thought I’d have to use one,” he admitted, shoving it in his pocket. He reached under the corner edge of the carriage and looked at her. “Let’s see how strong you are, missy.”

  Bronwen got her fingers under the edge and nodded.

  “One…two…three,” the driver breathed.

  Bronwen hauled, her neck and shoulders straining, as the edge of the carriage bit into her fingers. It was shockingly heavy. The two of them lifted it only a few inches.

  “I need five more inches!” Agatha said, her voice wavering.

  Bronwen let the carriage go and sucked at her fingers. The driver sighed. “It was a long shot, anyway,” he said, his tone kindly.

  “Let’s try again,” Bronwen told him. “This time, though…” She hauled her skirt up and bunched a fold of it over her hands and fitted them beneath the edge of the carriage.

  The passenger was staring at her, his wounded hand held against his chest, the other hand cradling it so he could keep the dock leaf in place. He seemed both shocked and amused at the sight of her petticoat. Bronwen didn’t care. She hadn’t had to care about such things for a long while. Besides, the only way the carriage and the man would leave would be if she and the driver could lift the carriage high enough to let Agatha fit the wheel back on the axle. Practicality demanded the indecency.

  She looked at the driver and nodded once more. “One…two…three.”

  They lifted, blowing heavily. The carriage raised another three inches.

  “More!” Agatha cried. “More!”

  Abruptly, the carriage raised up the necessary four inches.

  Bronwen gasped.

  The passenger leaned his head to one side, from around the corner of the carriage. He was bent in such a way she could tell he had his hands beneath the side of the carriage there. “If you can do it, so can I.” He straightened, moving out of sight. “Can you get the wheel on now?” Bronwen heard him ask Agatha. There was no strain in his voice.

  The carriage remained raised and steady, while Bronwen listened to the wheel being fitted back on the axle. She could feel the vibrations through her grip on the bottom of the carriage.

  “Let it down,” the passenger told them.

  Bronwen lowered the weight, rather than letting go. The driver copied her.

  The carriage settled back an inch or two, then stayed there.

  “Bugger me…” the driver murmured to himself, standing back and watching the conveyance as if it would give way and sink once more if he looked away. Then he moved around the corner to look at the wheel, pulling out the dog spike as he went. “Let me at it. Let’s get it locked in tight before it spills once more.”

  Bronwen brushed her skirt back into place. There were stains on the front of it from the grime beneath the carriage and tears from pushing through hedgerows. Few people would see her before she returned home and there was still rosemary to gather.

  She moved around the carriage to check how Agatha fared.

  The passenger bent and picked up the fallen dock leaf and placed it back over his hand.

  Agatha shook her gray hair back over her face and hunched back into her customary posture and shrugged the bag back into position against her shoulders. “We should hurry, before the rain gets here.” She looked at Bronwen.

  Bronwen nodded.

  “It will rain?” the man said. He looked up at the clear sky. “Impossible.”

  “Not so much,” the driver told him, hammering his fist against the flat head of the dog spike, working it into the hole left by the missing pin to secure the wheel. “She be the witch woman. Most folks around here say she’s got magic. I don’t know about that. If she says it’s going to rain then I, for one, would put the hay in the stable.”

  Agatha bent even more, turning her shoulder to hide her face. Bronwen rested her hand on Agatha’s trembling shoulder. “Let’s go,” she whispered.

  Agatha nodded.

  They headed for the trees, hurrying.

  “A moment!” the man called out.

  Bronwen ignored him.

  “How do I thank you? I don’t know your name!”

  “That suits me just fine!” Bronwen yelled back, just before they made their escape into the trees.

  Chapter Three

  After all Baumgärtner’s talk about the richness and well-founded roots of Northallerton, when the house itself hove into view, Tor felt disappointed.

  It was an ordinary, humble building, not at all like the grand estates Tor had spotted while enduring the interminable train journey from Edinburgh. He examined the many-angled establishment as the carriage eased around the long, sweeping curve leading up to the entrance. The wide curve gave him a view of two sides of the building.

  The house was a jumble of rooflines, planes and chimneys, the brown slate roof melding into brown stone walls almost seamlessly. There were six dormer windows running along the side of the house, the glass shining in the afternoon sun. Two wide, tall façades of stone featured at the front, between the sloping roof. Three dormer windows ranged between the towers.

  There was a pleasing symmetry to the arrangement, even if it wasn’t grand marble. Vines grew up the sides of the house, reaching for the roof. Most of the leaves had dropped.

  The glimpse of the side of the house proved it was as long as it was wide. A conservatory hugged the length of the flank. Beneath the glass and black iron, Tor could see green leaves and bright flowers. Summer still lingered inside. It was a pleasing note.

  The outbuildings and staff quarters hid behind ancient oak trees. He could see them through the trunks and bare branches. The buildings matched the main house—brown stone, brown slate and a welcoming wisp of smoke rising from the chimneys, speaking of warmth and crackling flames inside.

  There was a domestic, peaceful air about the establishment that was novel. Tor decided that he liked it. For now, anyway.

  The carriage came to a gentle halt on the gravel in front of the house. The driver had been delicate in his handling of the vehicle—no heavy braking, no sharp turns, nothing that would stress the wheel and its temporary pin.

  As the carriage came to a stop, the butler emerged, tugging his jacket sleeves into p
lace.

  When Tor had first walked into the bewildering and complex Waverley Train Station in Edinburgh without a companion or servant at his side, he had been reminded that he was expected to open his own doors. He’d adapted quickly. Now, he thrust open the carriage door and stepped onto the gravel. He folded the dock leaf and pushed it into his pocket. He may need it later. The medicinal benefits of the plant were undeniable.

  “I would speak to your master,” he told the butler.

  The man nodded. “Might I have a name to announce you with, my lord?”

  “No,” Tor said.

  The man blinked. “Ah…very well, then, my lord. If you will follow me?”

  Tor nodded.

  The butler turned and marched back into the house.

  The front door, which had seemed humble, was deceptively large. Tor realized how wide and tall it was only when he passed through.

  The space beyond the door was laid with more natural stone, worn to a smooth shine from generations of feet treading upon it. Massive oak beams crossed overhead. To the right, stairs ran up to the second floor, bending back on themselves in the middle. On the landing, wood paneling and plaster were below high windows. The mullioned windows let in the sun, that made the red in the patterned runner winding up the stairs blaze.

  The air was warm and comfortable.

  “This way, my lord,” the butler murmured.

  The room Tor was shown into was a drawing room. A large fireplace held a fire, burned down to white glowing coals. There were signs of occupation. An embroidery box with the lid still open and the lady’s sewing hoop resting against the rim. A book left on a table beside the big chair by the fire. And a more intriguing note—a toy soldier beneath the sofa, with just the black legs with their bright red stripe peeping out.

  Tor had never seen a child’s toy in an adult room before.

  The tension that had been sitting between his shoulders since leaving Edinburgh eased. He was in a far different world from his own, which was just what he sought.

  He moved over to the fire. There were few flames to warm him, although the banked coals put out a ferocious heat. Not that he was cold. He had not been cold since arriving in Britain, although the damp had a way of oozing through to his bones and making them ache.