Burning Bright (Brambridge Novel 2) (13 page)

The vicar was delighted to see him.

“Come in, Lord Stanton! We are honored by your presence.”

He stepped into the large hall which was decorated with damask curtains, and dark furniture.

“Please meet my wife, Mrs. Madely.”

A large woman with a ruddy face and enormous wig stepped into the hallway. Mrs. Madely gave him what she must have thought of as a coquettish smile. She was wearing a dress that was too tight for her and which exposed an enormous amount of chest.

“Charmed,” he said abruptly. Mrs. Madely’s smile disappeared, revealing a mouth lined severely at the edges.

At the vicar’s nod, she led them into an enormous room filled with large bunches of flowers. The room had a view of the graveyard in which the grass grew long, up to the flint side of the church.

“I’ll ring for tea.” Mrs. Madely sat down primly in one of the hard chairs that sat in the window. It groaned under her corpulent weight. She pulled a cord that hung down the wall. A bell rang in the depths of the house.

Uncomfortably, the vicar motioned to James to take a seat. He sat down gingerly on a small pink velvet armchair facing the window. Mr. Madely sat himself next to his wife.

“I would like to ask you about someone called Viscount Summerbain and his granddaughter, Marie Mompesson.”

“There’s nobody of that name around here,” Mrs. Madely jumped in quickly. Her husband looked embarrassed and patted his wife’s hand. James waited.

“I know everyone around her, and they have never been here.” Mr. Madely shushed his wife, who looked like she was going to continue expanding on her theme.

But she paid no attention. Instead she looked over James’ shoulder.

“Tea, Harriet, and cake. Tell Cook not to over brew it. And make sure you have washed your hands.”

The vicar looked away from James in what he assumed to be embarrassment.

“Edgar told me about your predicament.” Mr. Madely fiddled at his collar and then patted a pile of books next to him. “I have taken a look at the church registers, and whilst I found Viscount Summerbain listed as a contributor to the parish, I did not find him in the death register, nor did I find his daughter or even a granddaughter.”

The vicar stopped talking when the maid entered. He waited in silence as the girl served Mrs. Madely first. Her elbows jerked as she set the teapot in front of Mrs. Madely, and then crashed a plate of cakes onto the same table. Whirling away, she brought a stack of plates and small forks back to the table. Mrs. Madely tsked.

“Lord Stanton first, Harriet!”

James stiffened. Harriet? He hadn’t really listened the first time that Mrs. Madely had used the maid’s name. If it was the same Harriet, how much had she heard?

The maid picked up a plate and unceremoniously dumped a cake on it. Keeping her head low, she handed James a napkin and then the plate with a fork next to it. James bent his neck slightly to try and look under the maid’s mob cap, but she turned her face away.

“Harriet, did you wash your hands?”

But the maid did not stop moving. She acted as if she had not heard. She picked up the teapot and handed the plate to Lord Stanton.

“Tea?” she said, and without waiting for an answer, poured. And poured.

The cup overflowed. It poured down James’ hand and beneath his cuffs. It cascaded off the handle and soaked into his buckskin breeches.

With an oath, he dropped the cup on the floor.

“Harriet!” screeched Mrs. Madely. “Harriet!”

James stood. He towered over her. His jaw clenched. She lifted her head to look at him defiantly. Hazel gaze met green. She looked at him steadily, brandishing the teapot in one hand, the same way she had held the mock sword. Her chin tilted up defiantly.

“I’m so terribly sorry, my lord,” she said quietly. “What a terrible accident.”

“I say, Harriet,” the vicar dithered. “Do put the teapot down, dear.”

“Just wait till your Edgar hears of this young lady! He’ll have you out of that school house before you can say Jack Robinson,” Mrs. Madely squawked, making an effort to lift her large frame out of her seat.

With a last narrowing of her eyes, Harriet turned slowly away from James and placed the teapot down heavily on the table. Mrs. Madely fell back with a shriek, whilst Mr. Madely shrank back into his large seat with his arms around his body.

“If that is all?” Harriet asked perfunctorily. She didn’t wait for an answer and stalked quietly out of the room.

“I’m so terribly sorry, my lord,” Mrs. Madely stammered.

James mopped at his breeches with the linen that Mrs. Madely brought him. The tea-infused water stained the beautiful buckskin and created a trickle into his boots.

It didn’t take away from the lasting image that he had of Harriet, the flush in her cheeks and glint in her eye that had given her the look of a goddess in flight. Nothing like a starched schoolteacher.

God help him.

He stopped sponging his legs as Harriet appeared outside the window, walking as straight backed as any ton miss through the churchyard. The vicar and Mrs. Madely still chattered and, facing towards him, did not notice as he tracked her progress to the edge of the cemetery. She stopped once at a group of three headstones and then carried on stalking through the grass. He almost burst out loud laughing when she kicked the gate at the opposite end with a well-aimed kick, and danced back, howling. It seemed that old habits really did die hard.

“Whatever can we do to compensate?”

“Pardon?”

Mr. Madely fingered his collar again. “My lord, what can we do to compensate for ruining your clothes?”

James put his hands out in a calming motion as Mrs. Madely continued to squawk her apologies over her husband’s more rational tones.

“I’m sure if you could undertake to have my clothes repaired, then everything will be just fine.” James looked down at his breeches. An entirely new panel would need to be sown onto them to make them good again—the stain would never come out.

Neither the vicar nor his wife had any more information on the disappearance of the Viscount and his daughter. With relief, he made his excuses and left shortly after, taking the same route that Harriet had followed through the churchyard.

In curiosity, he stopped at the three headstones. One was merely marked John Smith, and the date of 1800. The others, standing slightly further away, marked the graves of Peter and Claire Beauregard and 1811. He sighed. What had he been hoping for? A headstone inscribed Viscount Summerbain? Of course Harriet would stop here. They were the graves of her parents that he had never known.

CHAPTER 13

Harriet pulled the small knife out of her sewing pouch and ripped open the seam to the waistcoat Janey had sown for Mercutio.

“Fiddlesticks,” she muttered. She inserted a piece of material and, taking her needle from her mouth, sewed a pocket into the waistcoat with untidy stitches.

“I beg your pardon?” said her aunt, who was reading the latest London Weekly she had taken from the vicarage. It was least two months out of date.

Harriet pushed her needle back into her mouth again and mumbled, “Nothing.” She shook out the waistcoat and laid it on top of her sewing basket. Underneath now lay a pair of trousers, a shirt, and a hat that she had purloined from the midsummer play, as well as one pair of ruined buckskin breeches and a linen shirt.

Harriet had wanted to sink into the ground when Agatha had given the breeches and shirt to her to mend. But her aunt hadn’t said a word, and still hadn’t. Her aunt
knew
she was terrible at sewing.

“Listen to this, Harriet.” Agatha lifted the paper. “The Royal Academy is pleased to announce the 1816 spring exhibition of Turner paintings. Lord and Lady Guthrie are expected to attend.”

Harriet removed the needle and slipped it back into her sewing pouch. “What do Turner’s paintings look like?”

“From what I can remember, many of them are seascapes.” Agatha glanced up at the paintings on the wall. “Not unlike Peter’s, I think. I can’t really remember, I was more interested in the dancing at the balls.” She pursed her lips slightly. “I found London rather stifling.”

Agatha resumed reading the paper.

“Oh look, they even have lions at the Tower of London. Apparently it was a gift from the Dey of Algiers to the King!”

As Agatha immersed herself back in the paper, Harriet pushed the waistcoat underneath the breeches in the basket.

“Aggie,” Harriet said. “May I please visit Mrs. Denys in Ottery St Mary?”

Agatha looked from the wall to Harriet with a distracted gaze. “Mrs. Denys?”

“Yes, she is very good at doctoring. I thought that given my experience with Tommy…” Harriet’s voice trailed away under Agatha’s forthright stare.

“When will you go?”

Harriet clenched her fingers. Her aunt’s question was tantamount to saying yes. “In two days’ time.”

“You will be careful with Isabelle on that road to Ottery won’t you? I wish we had a maid to look after you.” Agatha dipped her head to look at the paper again. “Not that it ever helped me,” she muttered quietly.

Two days passed quickly. Knowing that her aunt would be working at the vicarage until the Madelys had their supper, Harriet had plenty of time to load the bale of lace at dusk onto their cart.

She wriggled into the trousers. She was right to have worried. The trousers were a very tight fit. Drawing the chemise over her head, Harriet looked at herself in their old mirror. She gasped: It was as though she was almost naked. The trousers revealed the shape of her legs much higher than her ankle, and clung tightly to her well-curved thighs.

There was no time for alteration. Bill had asked her to be on the beach an hour after sundown. She had to take Isabelle down, unload the bale and then bring her back up again. The pony was going to stay in Janey’s back garden. Janey had squawked like a fishwife when she had heard Harriet’s plan.

Quickly pushing her sewing pouch into the pocket she had sewed in the waistcoat, Harriet left for the stable. Protesting, Isabelle drew Harriet and the cart down the long lane to the village. Harriet felt very unaccustomed to the new clothes, yet they made her step more freely, and it was easy to imitate a young man’s swagger, especially after her demonstrations of Mercutio and Tybalt to her young actors.

Harriet tried to make as little noise as possible as she and Isabelle passed the Fountain Inn. Glancing down the road, it was evident that the fire was still alight inside the forge. Pulling up on Isabelle’s reins, Harriet stopped the cart hesitantly in the field entrance just after the inn. She was to have met Bill on the beach, but if his forge was alight then it meant that he had not left.

Dismounting from the cart, Harriet took a deep breath and walked as nonchalantly as she could down the road. As she put one foot in front of the other, she tried to imitate the loose hipped movement of her male pupils. She jumped as the alarm of a pheasant sounded in the hedgerow next to her. Hunching her shoulders, she moved quickly sideways into the verge and hunkered down on her knees. Nothing else moved.

She was being silly. Harriet rose and stepped back out onto the road. She needed to walk down the hill as if she had every right to be there. Jumping into the bushes every time there was a sound would only draw attention. A horse neighed loudly in the field next to her. With a muffled shriek, Harriet jumped back onto the verge and cowered with her hands on her head.

For five minutes she stood bent over, waiting for voices. But still none came. With trembling knees, Harriet ventured back onto the road and further down the hill.

In relief, she reached the forge and entered through the open door stealthily. Bill looked up from the glowing anvil and put his hammer down.

“Who are you? We don’t take visitors at this time of night.”

Harriet stayed in the shadows. “I’ve got a message for you.” Bill’s forehead furrowed in the firelight.

“Who from?”

Harriet stayed silent.

“Are you from Renard?” Harriet let the silence deepen. “Lady Catherine? Mrs. Axtone?” Frustration laced his voice

Harriet stepped back into the shadows with a gasp. Mrs. Axtone was the mistress of a very large estate just beyond Seaton that was renowned for its noisy peacocks. And the fact that Mrs. Axtone was young and very beautiful.

Bill clenched his fists, and took a step forward towards his anvil, picking up his hammer as lightly as if it were a feather. “Show yourself.”

Harriet bit her lip and walked into the light. Recognition did not dawn on Bill’s face until she was only a few feet away from him. He let his hammer fall with a clang back onto the anvil.

“Harriet,” he breathed exasperatedly.

Harriet nodded in reply and put her hands on her hips. “Mrs. Axtone, Lady Catherine?” She quirked an eyebrow at him.

Bill looked away. “No one you need to know about.”

“Bill, you proposed to me!” Never mind that she was always going to say no. After his blush inducing propositioning at the schoolhouse, it was a delight to watch him shift uncomfortably in front of the fire.

“I'm sorry, Harriet. We won't be going today,” Bill said in an obvious effort to change the subject. “The conditions aren't right, and I've received word that Renard has some problems with his shipment.”

Harriet sat down heavily on a spare barrel.

“We will have to delay a week, at least until the storms and sea dies down. I’ve also received word that Carmichael, the riding officer, is on patrol. Someone’s tipped him off that the
Rocket
will sail soon. He’s everywhere in the village at the moment.”

Harriet drew a breath. She had made all her excuses to her aunt. She twisted awkwardly in her new clothes. The breeches were too still too snug over her bottom and the loose chemise and jacket kept catching on anything waist-height. It was so different to wearing a dress where one had to be mindful of anything on the ground. She resisted the urge to scratch at her face. Her wild hair was tied tightly into a queue at the nape of her neck.

Bill made an appreciative sound. Harriet stopped twisting. She needed to discourage the man, not lead him on any further. Crossing her arms across her body, she backed out of the forge.