Jessica Page 2

  “Why?”

  “ ‘Tis the smugglers you’ll be hearing, and smugglers be no gentlemen.”

  “Smugglers crossing my land?” The green eyes flashed angrily.

  “Ah, and they’ll continue to do so with or without your permission. There’s nothing you can do about it, and nothing you’d want to do about it if you had any sense. Let sleeping dogs lie, they says, and ‘tis a sensible maxim to go by in these parts.”

  “You approve, Tamsin?”

  “Do I approve? What sort of question is that? Of course I don’t, but then I value my neck and all, so I lies nice and quiet in my bed of nights and I says and does nothing when I hears those donkeys pass by towards the abbey. Now, let’s go in and I’ll brew a pot of tea and set out something for you to eat.”

  Jessica climbed down from the dogcart and turned Tamsin’s key in the lock of the yellow door. She stepped directly into the kitchen with its red-raddled floor. The air smelled of the paraffin with which Tamsin had polished the panes of the latticed windows. Onions, dried mushrooms, and apples hung in strings from the beams and a smoked ham swayed in the breeze from the doorway. Brass and copper utensils hung on hooks and rested on countless shelves around the newly-installed range that was surely the height of modern fashion in Henbury.

  Above the chest stood a row of pewter mugs and next to them two oil lamps, shining and polished. Some small hoggins completed the shelf, their caps arranged neatly beside them. On the scrubbed table was a clean napkin, beneath which Jessica found some newly-baked Banbury cakes. She picked one up and bit into it, savoring the melting pastry and the spicy taste. It was a taste that took away the years and she was a little girl again, standing in a farmhouse kitchen watching Tamsin roll out pastry with floury hands.

  She listened to Tamsin leading the little pony around to the small stable behind the cottage, then licked her fingers before taking the copper kettle to the hand pump over the stone sink. The range had been blackened lovingly, and Jessica smiled at her own reflection in the metal.

  The kettle was just beginning to sing when Tamsin came in at last, carrying a single hand case. “The rest can wait till morning light, it’ll be safe enough in the stable. Have you looked around?”

  “No, I’ve only been admiring your kitchen.”

  “Then look through here. This was how Master Philip left instructions the drawing room was to be furnished. He decided upon the bedroom upstairs as well.” Tamsin’s pleasant face reddened slightly and she quickly opened the drawing room door and Jessica stepped inside to look.

  Her first impression was of chintz: chintz curtains, chintz covers on the chairs, and colorful cushions. The floor was of dark wood, stained and polished until the curtains and covers were reflected in it. Beneath a window stood a huge carved chest, and a table and chairs stood at the far end of the room away from the fire.

  In the empty fireplace rested a huge china bowl of roses, and Jessica could smell their perfume wafting on the draft from the open window. It was a homely room, comfortable and practical and at the same time completely in keeping with the cottage—yet not in keeping with Philip’s taste. She thought it strange that he should have chosen to furnish and decorate the room in such a way.

  Tamsin was carving some cold meat as she turned back into the kitchen.

  “Philip chose it?”

  “Ah.”

  “And the bedroom?”

  “Ah, and the bedroom.”

  Cool air rushed down the stairwell as she opened the door and began to climb. The large landing was simply furnished with Tamsin’s few belongings, but the single bedroom beyond was a surprise that caught Jessica’s breath. The four-poster bed was hung with dark mulberry brocade and golden tassels, and the coverlet was of the softest swansdown. Chinese wallpaper of pale pink silk threw a gentle warmth over the room—a warmth picked up by the deep rose curtains at the tiny window.

  Ruby, mulberry, and white rugs were scattered on the dark polished floor, their fringes carefully combed and straightened and their pile fluffed by Tamsin’s industrious brush. Unlike the drawing room below, this room spoke of Philip Woodville’s taste. She crossed the room to rest her hand on the carved oak post of the bed, her eyes lowered to the mulberry drapes; mulberry had been his favorite color. He was so easy to recall, she thought, so very easy, with his thick dark hair tousled and his cravat awry, and a smile on his lips as he held his hand out to her. Suddenly Applegarth seemed empty and lonely, just as her life now was.

  The sound of a heavy coach passing down the track behind the cottage drew her attention to the window. Through the small panes she could see the matched team of grays moving slowly down the incline from the direction of Varangian. She stared at the remembered Woodville crest on the coach’s paneling, and with a jolt met the eyes of the woman inside. Rosamund blinked, her lips parting in surprise as she saw Jessica’s figure, and then with a snap she drew down the coach’s blinds.

  Jessica sat disheartened on the bed, her hands clasped in her lap. Rosamund would never forgive her for the past, never. Already the two years she must spend at Applegarth seemed a lifetime, a life sentence. She was jolted from her thoughts by Tamsin’s voice calling her down to the kitchen.

  Chapter 3

  That night she lay awake in the mulberry-draped bed, staring up at the golden tassels that moved in the breeze from the open window. She could see the sky above the dark mass of Lady-wood, the stars bright and as clear as cut diamonds, but there was no moon. Tamsin had warned her that tonight the smugglers would go through the woods to the bay. Moonless nights were always good for their activities, for the revenue men would not see so easily, nor would Sir Francis’ gamekeepers who were out watching for poachers.

  The single bray of a donkey made her sit up. Gathering her dressing gown around her she slipped from the bed and tiptoed past Tamsin’s little bed on the landing. The stairs creaked as she descended, but then from the kitchen window she could look out across the orchard toward the path into Ladywood.

  The donkeys moved slowly, black shapes of no depth, and silent but for that one earlier sound. The men were as indistinct as the beasts they led, and she found she was holding her breath until the last donkey had vanished through the break in the old wall and into Francis’ woods.

  She knew her next action was foolish but she could not help herself. Quietly she unbolted the door and went out into the cool night air. The wind rustled the trees and somewhere an owl called. The stars winked and flashed and the air was full of the scent of roses. Beneath the apple trees the grass was damp, dragging at her night clothes as she walked beside the path toward the opening into Ladywood.

  The trees stretched beyond the boundary of her land, their leaves whispering secretly and the air wafting more coolly from depths of the wood, as if rushing up from the foam of the waves on the distant beach. She could see the path running straight until the deep shadows swallowed it.

  For a moment she hesitated, for to go on would be more than the height of foolishness, yet curiosity pushed her to follow the smugglers who so brazenly used her land to come and go. She stepped over the crumbling, fallen stones of the wall and she was in Ladywood.

  She had not seen the horse. It was tethered close to a holly tree, its dark glossy coat mingling with the shadows so well as to make it almost invisible. It was the slight jingle of its harness that caught her ear so that she froze, her hand in the very act of brushing aside a low-hanging branch.

  She heard the shouts from deep in the woods, and through the tangle of trunks and branches she could vaguely see bobbing lights. Hounds began to bay and the donkeys brayed nervously. Jessica stared, her eyes round and her heart thumping. She turned, stumbling back towards the gap in the wall, but there was a sharp click and she was brought to an abrupt standstill as her trailing hem set off a trap. The fierce metal teeth closed over the folds of material and she was caught.

  With a cry of dismay she crouched to try to drag the ugly teeth apart, but it would not budge. D
esperately she struggled with it, trying to lift the trap itself, but it had been chained to a tree and she was held fast. Her only escape would be to remove her clothes. She looked toward the bobbing lights, they were coming nearer now and she could hear men running towards her.

  The horse whinnied nervously and she turned. A man in a heavy cloak was untethering it. Jessica shrank into the shadows but he had seen her. He came quickly over and she stared at him. “Sir Nicholas?”

  Philip’s brother glanced up from the knife he had drawn. “Miss Durleigh,” he said, his polite, disciplined voice so out of place in the alarm of the moment. The knife cut through her skirts like a flame through butter and she was free.

  He pushed her roughly towards the path. “Get back to Applegarth, and be quick about it.” The noise was redoubled in the woods and a pistol was fired. Nicholas frowned, his dark face reminding her poignantly of his dead brother. “God curse Varangian,” he muttered, seizing his horse’s reins.

  And then he was gone, mounting the nervous beast and urging it along the path into Applegarth. She followed, watching with a mixture of amazement and anger as he rode thoughtlessly across the few vegetables that Tamsin had planted beneath the apple trees.

  Gathering her cut, soiled skirts she ran toward the cottage, throwing open the door and shutting it quickly, pushing the bolts across firmly. Tamsin hurried down the stairs in her voluminous white gown, a nightcap set at an angle on her plaited brown hair.

  “Miss Jess? ...”

  “Hush, Tamsin. Look, there they are!” Jessica pointed through the window at the men running from Ladywood. They ran swiftly, their bodies bent. There was no sign of the donkeys, but the lights bobbing through the trees were closer than ever and the hounds were giving deep voice as they pursued the smugglers.

  “Miss Jess, you didn’t go out there?”

  Jessica nodded rather shamefacedly, for she could not understand her own foolishness.

  “After all I’d warned you!”

  “Shh. Look.”

  At the edge of Ladywood the lights had halted. They could see the men’s faces by the light of the lanterns and how hard it was to control the straining hounds that still sought to follow the scent. A man on horseback appeared behind the others, moving slowly through the gap in the wall into Applegarth. He controlled the nervous horse expertly, and Jessica had no trouble in recognizing Francis.

  She held her breath as he stared toward the cottage. Would he come to the door? She brushed her skirts nervously, for although she could remove the stains, how could she conceal the great cut where Nicholas Woodville’s knife had freed her?

  Then Francis turned back to his men and they melted back into Ladywood, the lights gradually vanishing among the trees. Only the constant sound of the hounds told that they were there.

  Tamsin lowered the blue and white curtain and turned to Jessica. “Whatever possessed you, Miss Jess?”

  “I don’t know, and that’s a fact. I saw them going in and felt the urge to follow. Oh, don’t say it again, Tamsin, for I know I should not have done it!”

  “But what happened to your clothes? Did they catch you then?”

  “No. No, I stepped against a trap and it caught my hem.” Jessica stared at the sliced-through cloth.

  “Then how did you get free?”

  “Sir Nicholas Woodville freed me.”

  “Sir Nicholas? But what were he doing there?” Tamsin stared at the window as if seeing into Ladywood.

  “I don’t know. His horse was tethered just inside Francis’ lands, and he seemed in a veritable anger about Francis’ men falling on the smugglers.” She glanced at Tamsin as she realized what she was thinking.

  “Miss Jess, do you think Sir Nicholas be the leader of the smugglers?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know. He was there, certainly.”

  “Well, I never. They reckon hereabouts that someone of the gentry must be leading the ring, but no one outside the ring itself is in the know. But Sir Nicholas Woodville?—that be a hard pill to swallow, him being so upright and strict to the letter of the law. A right turn-up that would be, and no mistake.”

  “We don’t know that that was why he was there, Tamsin, so don’t go jumping to any conclusions.”

  “Oh, I shall say nothing. I’m no daft curmudgeon to go sounding my tongue foolishly. Nonetheless, ‘tis a strange happening, a real strange happening.”

  “Tamsin, let us have another pot of your excellent Formosa tea.”

  “Reckon us’ll sleep ‘till noon tomorrow.”

  “It doesn’t matter if we do.”

  “That’s true enough,”

  The kettle was singing happily on the range when Tamsin set the pretty blue and white crockery on the table. “Miss Jess, did you see the Woodville coach earlier?”

  “Coming down from Varangian? Yes. Rosamund was in it.”

  “Ah, that’s what I were coming to. ‘Tis whispered, only whispered, mind, that Miss Rosamund do have her heart on her sleeve for Sir Francis.”

  Jessica stopped toying with her spoon and looked up swiftly. “How much of a whisper is it?”

  “That’s neither here nor there, if ‘tis a whisper then ‘tis suspect. She do spend some time over there, and that’s no whisper. Mind, I’ve always thought it were Sir Francis as she loved, and never Master Philip, but her folks wanted the Woodville marriage and anyway, Sir Francis had his heart set on you.”

  “Your instincts are nearly always right, Tamsin, and if you think she has always loved Francis then I am prepared to believe that it is so. But does Francis love her?”

  “Him? I doubt that if he did he would let her know. First off she were Master Philip’s wife, and now only recently widowed. He’d not make so low as to express his feelings one way or the other. He’m a gentleman through and through, a proper gentleman, not like some others as come to mind.”

  Jessica flushed. “The kettle’s boiling.”

  “Ah,” muttered Tamsin enigmatically.

  The kettle’s lid was rattling as steam billowed out. The tea hissed pleasingly in the silver teapot and Tamsin sat down while it brewed.

  “Miss Jess, I know as it’s none of my concern, but now seems as good a time as any to say what’s on my mind. Sir Francis loved you once, and today at the Feathers it seemed to me he was still smitten. Perhaps it was just his way, but nonetheless, that’s how it looked. Now, Miss Rosamund loved him those years ago when you jilted him for Master Philip. She saw Sir Francis hurt by you and she saw her own husband desert her for you. As if that weren’t enough, you now come back to Henbury and already you’ve been talking with Francis again. She’ll see you as a threat all over again. I beg of you, Miss Jess, stay well away from her, for any meeting ‘twixt the two of you will only be painful—and you’m the one as’ll be hurt the most for she’ve got right on her side. You didn’t then and you haven’t now.”

  “But I don’t want Francis.”

  “It don’t matter what you want now, it’s how she’s going to see it that counts.”

  “Two years is a long time, isn’t it?” Jessica’s green eyes were dark in the light of the candle Tamsin had set on the table.

  “Well, less’n you want to go to the poorhouse, Miss Jess, two years is what you must live here for. The sooner it passes the better for all concerned. Now then, drink this and then we can get us back upstairs to bed.” Tamsin frowned at the cut hem again. “That great, foolish man, cutting it like that. It be spoiled beyond redemption!”

  Jessica sipped the tea, thinking of what Tamsin had told her and thinking, too, about the strange affair of Sir Nicholas Woodville and the smugglers.

  Chapter 4

  The sun was warm as Jessica walked slowly along the track above Applegarth. Ladywood was noisy with the singing of birds and now and then she heard the lazy humming of bees among the foxgloves that bloomed among the ferns. She would not go much farther now, just to the brow of the hill above Varangian to see the sea.

  She twirle
d her parasol, watching the twisting shadow on the road before her, and breathing deeply of the scented Somerset air. Everything was so sweet and warm, so much as she remembered it. A tubby black and white puppy erupted from the ferns close by, yapping and capering around her as if fit to burst.

  “Nipper!”

  She turned as a young man carrying a shepherd’s crook came from a hidden path calling the mischievous, disobedient puppy to heel.

  “Good morning, miss, I’m sorry if he frightened you.”

  She smiled, liking his pleasant look and friendly brown eyes. “He didn’t frighten me, he’s a little small to do that.”

  “He’s full of his own importance this morning, for he’s had his first working with the sheep.”

  “Whose sheep?”

  “Sir Francis’—I’m his chief shepherd now my father’s dead and gone.”

  “You must be Jamie Pike then!”

  “Yes, miss.” He looked puzzled, “How? ...”

  “You don’t remember me do you? And yet once we sat next to each other in church and you pulled my hair until I scratched you and we were both chided in front of the whole congregation.”

  His eyes cleared. “Miss Jess! Well, I’d not have known you. My, you’re the fine lady now right enough.”

  “Not really. I’m still Jessica Durleigh. I’m no different.”

  He grinned. “That’s hard to swallow when I look at you.” He indicated the crisp brown and white gown and bonnet and the dainty white slippers peeping from below the frilled hem of the gown.

  “They say you should not tell a book by its cover, and so I look at you in your rough old clothes and needing a good wash, and I say to myself that it is hard to remember that Jamie Pike had the sharpest tongue and mind in Henbury and that even as Sir Francis’ shepherd you are wasting your talents.”

  His eyes were steady. “I’m happy like this.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Perhaps you are. I wouldn’t know.”