Burning Bright (Brambridge Novel 2) (8 page)

No.
Shaking her head to clear the unwanted vision, she turned her attention back to her papers. That sort of hero only happened in books.

“You know your father was just the same.”

Harriet jumped in surprise. Agatha surveyed her over the open letter. “He was only happy when he was outside, immersed in the elements with his painting. He never was one for the confines of indoors.”

Harriet bowed her head again. She hadn’t realized that the strain of the teaching was beginning to show. But then, who needed a young girl from the shires who enjoyed pretending to be other people? There was no future in that.

Lifting her head, she looked around the comfortable sitting room. The wall was covered in beautiful miniature oil paintings. It appeared there hadn’t been a future in painting for her father either. When her parents had been killed all that remained of their small belongings were numerous paintings, a few ragdolls, and the hessian sewing pouch.

Agatha had given Harriet the sewing pouch on her eighteenth birthday. The needle had not dulled, and the knife and scissors had remained sharp. Agatha had seen to that. A length of embroidery hidden inside had remained as pristine as the day her mother had stitched it, the saucepan shape of the five-star motif intricately woven across the slightly yellowing material.

Harriet blinked. The memories of her parents had faded away. Sometimes she thought she could remember her mother telling her endless stories, but the words didn’t come to her. All she had left to hold onto was the embroidery and the paintings. She gazed at the nearest painting, her eyes focusing on the bottom right hand corner. “Why have they all got PB marked on them?” she asked absently.

“It’s your father’s initials. He needed to mark them because the paintings were destined for an exhibition. I’ve always particularly liked the one of the church in Ottery St Mary.” Agatha stood to look at the painting more closely.

Harriet clutched at her papers and stared unseeingly at the topmost page. Her favorite picture was the one of Longman’s Cove during a storm, although she liked all of them. They detailed every part of the Devon coast all the way to the beach at Seaton. She watched as her aunt moved across to the painting of Longman’s Cove. It reminded her of the day of the spring storm, patching Tommy up in front of the fire. What had Bill said before she had started stitching Tommy’s shoulder? The Frogs would do anything for British wares?

Harriet crumpled her papers in frustration, blowing an unruly lock of hair out of her face. There was no way a Frenchwoman would ever deign to buy fashionable clothes like Mrs. Madely’s putrid green dress, but the lace on the other hand—

“Are you feeling all right?” Agatha asked with a concerned frown.

“Yes,” Harriet mumbled. She felt lightheaded again. What she had in mind was not for the fainthearted.

A knock resounded at the door.

Agatha groaned. “Please tell me it’s not Bill with another injured man.”

Harriet unfurled the crumpled papers and pushed them into her waiting bag with relief. “I’ll get it.” Smoothing down her skirts, she moved to the door and fumbled at the lock. She opened the door an inch and peered into the darkness. A tall form faced away from her. Harriet sighed. Not again.

“I’m not sewing up any more injured men, you know. You can’t just keep coming here expecting me—Oh.”

The man turned. In every way he looked like Bill, and yet in every way he did not. The dark light hid the fact that his eyes were an emerald green where Bill’s were brown. He was leaner and yet still as muscular. He also caused shivers to course down her spine where Bill did not.

“Lord Stanton.” Harriet swallowed. He didn’t say anything. The silence lengthened.

“Who is it?” Agatha called.

James raised his eyebrows and planted his legs apart. It didn’t look like he would be leaving any time soon.

“Forgive me,” she said stiltedly. Her manners won over. “Do come inside.”

Agatha stood as Harriet opened the door more fully to allow James in.

“James!” Agatha cried in delight, and then wrung her hands. “Do beg my pardon, I quite forgot myself, you must be yes, Lord Stanton now. Oh dear, I’m not quite sure what to call you.”

“James is fine.” James quirked one edge of his lips upwards and walked into the room. Instantly the cottage seemed smaller.       

“Hmph.” Harriet couldn’t stop her mutter of indignation.

“What’s that?” James shot her an enquiring look.

“Oh nothing.”

Nothing, my foot.
What had he said to her? ‘That’s Lord Stanton to you.’ Bloody man. What made him think he could speak to her like that?

James was still looking at her. She resisted the urge to pat her hair or adjust her skirts. He had known her when she was fourteen and running around barefoot.

“I was wondering if I could speak to Harriet.” James paused and looked at her. “In her capacity as the Brambridge school mistress?” He turned back at Agatha, the strange half smile back again on his face. Harriet resisted the urge to mutter again. He knew exactly how to get what he wanted.

“I, why yes of course.” Agatha glanced at Harriet and twitched her nose warningly. “I’ll be just upstairs.”

Harriet waited until Agatha had disappeared around the bend in the stairwell. “Why are you here?” she asked sharply.

James looked around the cottage and then sank into the chair by the fire. He pushed his legs out in front of him and crossed one long muscular leg over the other. His boots gleamed in the firelight. Harriet couldn’t help contrasting them to her dusty shoes with worn out heels.

“I came to apologize.”

“About time.”

“You see, there you go again. As prickly as a hedgehog. Always lashing out before hearing the full story.”

“And what story were you going to tell me?” Harriet closed her mouth with a snap. She wasn’t normally so waspish.

James sighed in obvious frustration. He uncrossed his legs and stood. “Harriet, I wasn’t going to tell you any story. I wanted to say sorry for being so sharp when you first saw me. I was tired. I was…” His voice faltered. “I was embarrassed that you had so easily managed to trip me up. Of course you can call me James. That’s who I am.” He shrugged his impeccably dressed shoulders. “I don’t feel much like a lord anyway.”

Harriet clenched her fists into the creased muslin of her second best serviceable dress. She wished he hadn’t apologized. It was far easier thinking that he was a cad and a bounder. It helped keep some distance in her mind.

“I must apologize too,” she said stiffly.

“What for?”

Harriet sniffed. “For implying that what the circulars said was true.”

James turned away from her. His shoulders stiffened slightly. “What if it was true, Harriet?” he asked in a low voice. “True that I had killed a man, many men?”

Harriet stilled, then plucked at a curl of hair and pushed it behind her ear. Whatever James was, he wasn’t dishonorable, at least his younger self hadn’t been. He was nothing like his father.

“Then I’d say you had good reason to do it.”

James remained facing away from her. She took a step towards him. He still didn’t turn. Reaching out a hand, she touched gently at his sleeve.

He whirled, his strong hand closing on her wrist. In silence they both looked at where his hot palm warmed her cool skin. One by one James peeled back his fingers and dropped his hand to his side.

“Forgive me again,” he said, turning back to the fire.

She waited but James said nothing. “I believe you wanted to speak to me about the school?”

He nodded and walked over to the wall of paintings. He paced the length of the wall, glancing into every rustic frame. It was a surprise when he spoke again. “I wanted to know who pays you.”

“The estate of course.” Harriet sank into a kitchen chair as surprise filled her. “At least, I thought it was the estate. Edgar pays me at the end of every month.”

“Edgar.” James stopped and threw her a quick look before returning to the paintings. “I like these,” he said abruptly. “The use of dark and light is exemplary. It makes them feel very real.”
      “I’m sure you could find my wages in the estate accounts,” Harriet offered. “I receive three and six pence.”

James gazed at her in obvious disbelief. “Three shillings and six pence?”

She folded her arms around her body. “If that is too much, I’m sure I could take three and three pence, although my pupils will have to go without books for a while.”

James leant forward as if he couldn’t see her clearly. “Harriet, don’t you understand you are being paid a pittance? In London those are lower than the wages of the children that sweep the chimneys.”

“I don’t have much cause to go to London.”

He softened his tones. “Harriet, whatever happened to the acting? Why did you choose to become a schoolmistress?”

Harriet bowed her head. How could she ever tell him that when he had left her those years ago, she had panicked? As she had waited, the tide had washed to her feet, threatening to pick her up and push her against the bottom of the cliffs if she waited much longer. Following his path, she had entered the mine. And there she had stayed for six hours, lost in the darkness. Faint from lack of food and water, utterly alone.

That was when she had decided to become a schoolmistress. Without James to save her yet again, her foolhardiness had nearly cost her life.

Schoolmistresses didn’t need anyone to save them.

But then again, nothing exciting ever happened to them.

“It seemed like a good career for me,” she said in low tones. “I am well educated, and there was an opening.”

James stood. Harriet gazed into the fire, shaking her head at a light warm touch to her head.

“You look better with your hair free.” James stood in front of her, a serious expression still dominating his face. He touched one of her unruly locks again. “Even schoolmistresses should have holidays.”

“I—”

“I must go.” Without giving Harriet time to speak, James opened the cottage door and stepped out into the night. She watched as he passed the kitchen window and disappeared through the gate into the lane.

CHAPTER 8

James nodded curtly at Edgar and Bill, who sat at separate tables in the Fountain Inn staring into their drinks. He had slept late, his usual nightmares replaced by recurring visions of falling timbers and choking dust, the shadowy figure coming closer and closer towards a chink of light. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he did not pause and walked out into the yard where he had left Scorpius for a few moments whilst he had returned to fetch his telescope.

What was the matter with him? He could barely think straight. It was unusual for him to have forgotten something. James rested his head against Scorpius’ flank and took a deep breath. First he had grabbed at Harriet as if she was a French soldier-at-arms, and then he had caressed her hair as if his life depended on it. He reached an unsteady hand under the horse and tightened the saddle straps that had only been tied loosely by the inn’s groom.

Scorpius sidled sideways. He rolled his eyes a few times and snorted heavily into the cold stable air. Perhaps a run was in order. He had not been so lively since James had ridden him off the battlefield. It would do him good to feel the wind in his face too.

Scorpius quietened but shifted heavily when James swung himself into the saddle. Urging the horse out of the stable, they made short work of the back lanes out of Brambridge. Hitting the main road to Ottery St Mary at the top of the hill, James let loose with the reins. Scorpius surged forward, faster and faster.

James hunched forward over the flowing mane, his elbows tucked in and his boots firmly in the stirrups. As the wind blew through his own hair, he breathed out. The familiar feeling of being alive returned to him as it had time and time again on the Peninsular. He hadn’t had that feeling since… since the day before with Harriet. Except that that feeling had come with an intensity of emotion he hadn’t felt since leaving Brambridge.

His boot almost flew out of a stirrup as he lost concentration. Damn her. She must have hypnotized him. Read something in one of the many books that she had always had her nose in. Either that or the two long years of avoiding all social contact altogether as he had scrambled across Spain and Portugal in advance of the British Army had taken its toll. She was the first woman that he had thought about like this in a long time.

Reseating his boot in the stirrup, James hunched over Scorpius’ neck again, noting the marker that showed half a mile to Ottery St Mary.

With a scream, Scorpius slowed and then stopped dead. James hunched lower and pressed his powerful knees into the sides of the horse to urge him forward, but he would not move, skittering sideways on the spot.

Dismounting, and avoiding the trembling hooves, James held the reins loosely and made his way to the horse's head. Scorpius' eyes rolled even more furiously than before, and his muzzle dripped with foam. Clucking quietly, James checked the horse over carefully, from mane to hoof. Nothing appeared to be out of place. However, it was clear that Scorpius could not bear to ride him any longer. Indeed, every time James made to mount, the stallion sidestepped away neatly.

With a bark of disbelief, James grabbed the reins again and set off on foot towards Ottery St Mary. The army had bred a quick march into him that could last all day if needed.

Gradually Scorpius quietened, and by the time they reached Ottery St Mary, he was mischievously placid-looking. Finding a stable on the outskirts of the town, James led the horse into the yard, and stood waiting. A middle aged ostler paused in the middle of shifting straw in a stable and leaned on his spade. Straightening, he looked James in the eye, mouth opening in disbelief. James raised an eyebrow. The ostler snapped his mouth shut.

“I recognize you, sir. Pardon me for saying, Major Jim Lucky.”

James frowned. At his look of disbelief, the ostler snapped a salute. “Harald Denys, private, Fifth Grenadiers, sir.” He dropped his hand slowly back to his side, shaking his head. “We used to see you ride into battle in front of your troops at the end of the war. You were legendary, a scout who became a major. You rode out alongside your soldiers. Lord Lassiter was the only other man to do that.”