A Sister's Secret (34 page)

‘Captain Burnside, you are not to order my comings and goings, nor what I will do or won’t do. Will you strike this chisel or not, sir?’

‘I’ll not strike while you’re holding it, marm …’

‘Oh, if you call me marm once more, it will be you who will be struck, sir!’

‘Then let go of the chisel, Caroline, or the strike will bruise your fingers.’

She let go. He struck, and the chisel bit into the wood.
It quivered and rang. She watched as with blows he split the log. Perspiration glimmered on his forehead, dampening his hair.

She stood up, brushing chips from her gown. ‘Captain Burnside, I have been thinking about your regimental commander, Colonel Masterson,’ she said. ‘You spoke of him as if you were on excellent terms, that Cumberland would get nothing from him. Yet when I first saw you, you told me he forced you to resign your commission on account of your dishonourable behaviour. Were you lying to me?’

‘God forbid I should ever give you less respect than I should,’ he said.

‘That is not an answer, sir. That is more taradiddle.’

He wiped his brow and made a thoughtful observation of his patron.

If she was not a woman to suffer shyness, she could not deny she was becoming uncommonly sensitive under his eyes. But it was of all things ridiculous to feel herself colouring up. Revealing décolleté had been fashionable for years, and even the politest gentleman would openly study the feminine enchantment of a gown. One was used to it. Oh, how unfair that Captain Burnside could make her colour rise.

‘Lady Caroline,’ he said, ‘you’re a most unusual patron. I’ve known none with a warmer heart or with such tender regard for my welfare. It’s a privilege to serve you, and to anticipate the lucrative connections you may be able to manufacture for me by recommending me to any of your friends who come to be in need of my professionalism.’

Coming to, Caroline said, ‘That, sir, is a farrago of nonsense, designed to confuse me concerning what is true and what is not true. Be assured I shall examine you more keenly from now on, for I feel you have taken me
in on many counts. If I find you sadly wanting, sir, I shall have your head.’

‘Well, it ain’t the most deserving head in the world, that’s true,’ he said.

‘I agree,’ said Caroline, and walked away in a mood that took her up to her room to write an immediate letter to her father-in-law.

Dearest Father-in-law,

I am at present in Sussex by reason of certain developments that I shall explain another time. I must tell you that Captain Burnside has not been a disappointment so far, and although he is undoubtedly as devious as you warned, I have discovered some good in him. In your loving regard for me, do please favour me with as much further information about him as you can. I assume that in finding him for me you acquainted yourself thoroughly with many details concerning his background.

I shall be most grateful if you are able to let me have his full history, and beg you to send your reply to my London address with all speed. I am most anxious to know all there is to know about Captain Burnside, for I have his future in mind and would like to do what I can to ensure it is more estimable than his past.

I send you my love, and please give my most affectionate greetings to my dearest mother-in-law.

She sent Sammy sneaking out with the letter a few minutes later. He was to take it to the carriers in Wychling, and to avoid being seen by Captain Burnside.

‘Yes’m,’ said Sammy, well up to such discretion in his devotion to her.

‘No, I won’t,’ cried Annabelle, looking with horror at the round, crisp onions in the earthenware bowl.

‘Heavens, I ain’t asking you to take ’em to bed with you,’ said Jonathan, ‘only to peel ’em. Baked onions with stewed rabbit make for a gourmet’s repast.’ Sammy had snared a couple of rabbits. ‘There now, you can manage to peel a few onions.’

‘Oh, you all are surely a brute and a bully.’

‘No, I ain’t,’ said Jonathan, ‘or I’d have made you skin the rabbits, my pretty one.’

‘I am not your pretty one,’ said Annabelle, gazing at the onions with utter distaste. ‘Oh, how Captain Burnside came to regard you with any favour I cannot think.’

‘Oh, I ain’t as bad as all that,’ said Jonathan, placing the prepared rabbits in the oven. ‘I fancy we need more water, by the way. The bucket’s there.’

The wooden bucket stood near the stove. It was empty.

‘I shan’t, nor won’t,’ said Annabelle. ‘I shan’t peel onions, and I won’t draw water. My pa would whip you for making me.’

‘Well, it’s all hands to the pump if we’re going to keep the lifeboat afloat,’ said Jonathan. ‘Here now, you need only half fill it.’ He picked up the bucket and offered it to her. Annabelle boxed his ears. He dropped the bucket in his surprise, and Annabelle kicked it across the stone floor.

‘Oh, heavens,’ he said, and he sat down, reached swiftly and pulled her over his knees. Annabelle screamed in outrage.

It brought Caroline hastening into the kitchen. She stared at the sight of her sister over Jonathan’s knees and kicking furiously. ‘Mr Carter! What are you doing?’

‘Nothing yet,’ said Jonathan breezily, ‘but it won’t take
long once I make a beginning. Beg you’ll stand aside, Lady Caroline.’

‘I will not! Release her, Mr Carter, do you hear!’

‘Beg to suggest it would be wiser to paste her, Your Ladyship,’ he said, but Annabelle gathered herself and sprang free. Suffused with rage, she boxed his ears again. ‘Well, damn my forbearing soul,’ said Jonathan, and laughed in cheerful appreciation of her spirit.

Annabelle seized his hair and yanked at it. ‘Odious, odious beast!’ she cried.

‘Annabelle!’ Caroline was shocked. ‘Annabelle, stop this!’

Annabelle let go. Jonathan looked up at her, then leapt to his feet. Annabelle gasped, retreated and fled out of the back door into the garden.

‘Can’t make her out,’ said Jonathan. ‘Won’t peel onions, won’t draw water.’

‘Then you shall draw the water, Mr Carter,’ said Caroline, ‘and I will peel the onions.’

‘Beg to inform you, Your Ladyship, that Captain Burnside won’t allow that,’ said Jonathan.

Her Ladyship presented him with her coolest look. ‘Mr Carter, you are mistaken if you think I live in fear and trembling of Captain Burnside,’ she said.

‘Eh?’ said Jonathan.

‘You may so live. I do not. I accept he is better versed than I am in dealing with the kind of unpleasantnesses he assumes are facing us, but as to other things, whether he will allow or won’t allow, I shall peel the onions while you draw water.’

‘Your Ladyship, it’s more than my head’s worth to let you,’ said Jonathan. ‘He’ll fetch me a rattler that will curdle my brains.’

‘Mr Carter, I declare you ridiculous. Kindly do as I ask, while I do as I wish.’

Jonathan drew the water from the well, and Caroline peeled the onions. She did so in cool defiance of their pungency, wondering the more why the need to marry again had taken such a hold on her.

Annabelle had sought refuge with Captain Burnside. ‘Charles, oh, I have been bruised and battered by that dreadful ruffian,’ she informed him breathlessly. ‘How can such a scallywag be a friend of yours?’

The captain, hammer and chisel in his hands, and perspiration on his brow, examined her searchingly. True, she was flushed and her gown slightly dishevelled, but he remarked no bruises.

‘Come, sweet girl,’ he said, ‘I fancy you’ve only suffered another argument with Jonathan. And all it has done is given you a tender flush to your prettiness. I ain’t remarked you looking prettier, indeed I ain’t.’

‘Charles, you are such an angel I could kiss you,’ said Annabelle, always responsive to compliments. ‘You are going to stay here with us until we return to London?’

‘I have to catch the dawn stage from Lewes tomorrow, but will be back the day after, on Monday.’

‘We are to spend all day tomorrow with that fearful brute, Mr Carter?’

‘Alas, yes, dear young lady. But if he brings further tender flushes to your prettiness, accept them, for they become you.’

That brought Annabelle to laughter.

The supper of baked onions and roast potatoes, with the rabbit stewed in a delicious sauce concocted by Jonathan, was eaten hungrily and with much appreciation. Over the meal, Caroline asked the captain if it was true that he intended to go to London tomorrow and return on
Monday. He replied that it was quite true. She asked his reason for going.

‘Cumberland,’ he said.

Her eyes levelled with his across the dining table. ‘If you intend to put your head in the lion’s den, please don’t do so in our behalf, for neither Annabelle nor I would want you to.’

‘We surely would not,’ said Annabelle. ‘Let Mr Carter go. His head is out of our consideration.’

‘It ain’t out of mine,’ said Jonathan.

‘I vow that if
my
head were made of thick wood, I should not care whether I lost it or kept it,’ said Annabelle.

‘Precisely what are you going to do in London concerning Cumberland?’ Caroline put the question challengingly to Captain Burnside.

‘Do?’ he said.

‘Yes, do, sir,’ said Caroline, and Annabelle smiled. How they fenced, these two, much as if their long-standing friendship held little secrets.

‘Well, Cumberland ain’t to be ignored, d’you see,’ said the captain ambiguously.

‘Faith, who don’t see him these days?’ said Jonathan. ‘He’s a ubiquitous gentleman, with a nose in every pie.’

‘The Duke of Cumberland is also mannerly,’ said Annabelle, ‘which you are not.’

‘Well, I ain’t too much like him, that I ain’t,’ said Jonathan affably.

‘Captain Burnside?’ said Caroline, persisting.

‘Yes, quite so, I think I should go,’ said the captain. ‘One needs to keep up with Cumberland’s unprettier activities. It don’t do to be in ignorance of what he’s about. Jonathan, Annabelle, allow me to compliment you on the baked onions.’

‘You may compliment me,’ said Caroline, ‘for they were prepared by me and nursed to perfection by me.’ She smiled as the captain cast a frowning look at Jonathan. ‘No, it’s no use your fetching Mr Carter a rattler, for what I wish to do I will do. I cannot sit idle and let Mr Carter and Annabelle do all the work.’

‘Oh, she don’t do more than she can contrive,’ said Jonathan, ‘but then she’s a dainty chit and don’t care a great deal except for looking pretty, which I ain’t disposed to quarrel with, for she does look pretty, the more so when her dander is up and she’s boxing my ears.’

Caroline laughed.

Annabelle turned a scornful look on Jonathan. ‘No, I never did meet such a bore and a scallywag as you,’ she said.

‘There,’ said Jonathan, ‘ain’t she delicious?’

It was a while after supper, at twilight, that Caroline stepped from the cottage into the back garden. Previously, the place had been occupied by one of her farm labourers and his family. With the arrival of further children, twins, she had been able to house him in a larger cottage on the other side of the farm. She was the owner not only of Great Wivenden but many cottages both on the estate and outside it.

The garden was being tended temporarily by the labourer, who came once a week to hoe the flower and vegetable beds, and he was allowed to harvest the vegetables.

She walked along the path that fronted the garden and made her way to the stable, where Sammy was keeping her coach and four.

Sammy appeared. ‘Ah, Sammy,’ she said, looking around.

‘Yes’m?’

‘Have you seen Captain Burnside? I think he came out here a little while ago.’

‘Oh, he’s a-gone walking, Your Ladyship, that way.’ Sammy pointed in the direction of Great Wivenden. ‘He asked me which way it was over the fields.’

‘It?’ said Caroline.

‘Great Wivenden, Your Ladyship.’

‘He took the path over that field, Sammy?’

‘Yes’m.’

‘Thank you, Sammy.’ Caroline went back to the cottage and re-emerged only moments later, wearing a light summer cloak of dark green, its hood thrown back and her head bare. She made her way at a quick, gliding walk to the field beyond the garden and the little wood. She pursued a fast course, and it was not long before she sighted the captain, a hundred yards ahead. She kept to that distance.

‘What’s that ye say?’ asked Cumberland.

‘Our man,’ said Erzburger, sickly and sallow of face from a stomach upset, ‘has again been advised that Lady Percival and her sister are not at home, Your Highness.’

‘Well, their absence or their presence don’t signify any longer,’ rasped Cumberland, ‘nor do heard or not heard. Ye ain’t supposing, are ye, that a twittering, featherbrained American cuckoo can put together a few words of yours and mine and make sense of ’em? Ye ain’t supposing I’m incapable of making her memory look vague and birdlike if she elects to quote us, are ye? Ye panicked, man.’

Erzburger might have remarked that, if that were so, His Highness had shared the panic. Instead, he said, ‘You are suggesting no further action, Your Highness?’

‘I ain’t making a suggestion. Ye are being told to do as I’ve done. To give yourself time to think. She ain’t of the stuff to stand up and blow trumpet blasts. Call off the hounds. Maintain the watch on your Irish friend.’

Erzburger might also have said the duke shared that friendship.

The twilight cast its softness over the land as the blue faded from the western sky. Fields lay peacefully at rest, offering undisturbed grass to nibbling rabbits. The green slopes of the South Downs lay in shadow. In little woods, dry leaves rustled and stirred to the advent of creatures that foraged only after the sun went down. Beeches, chestnuts and oaks stood in quiet contemplation of the air from which they drew their oxygen.

From the edge of a wood, Captain Burnside viewed the manor house of Great Wivenden grandly rising from the top of a gently ascending slope, its windows surveying a landscape undulating and magnificent. It was built of Sussex stone, three storeys high, its many gables creating lines of architectural handsomeness. There was nothing to suggest it had known enquiring strangers that day. But there existed the possibility that Cumberland, finding the birds flown, would have lost no time in investigating the country coop. Captain Burnside considered Cumberland wholly the dark prince.