‘I shall captain one myself.’ Jack gave the Prévôt a warm smile, purposefully not looking at Blanche. ‘As for the other, I believe I know where I can start my search.’
They left before Ronec decided this was too much and objected after all.
* * *
The sun was beginning to set as Jack and Blanche walked along the clifftop to the Maiden Stones. They would have come earlier in the day but once they reached Fort Carouel, and Blanche had greeted Andrey and Marie with tearful embraces, she’d wanted to bathe. With a wicked smile she had invited Jack to join her in the wooden tub, which he readily agreed to. Which had, inevitably, led to a very wet floor, a lot of laughter and the afternoon disappearing without either of them noticing the passing of time.
Now, they strolled arm in arm through the wildflowers and bushes Blanche had described before. It was as breathtaking as she had promised it would be. In the distance, a ship followed the line of the coast, ploughing through the azure waves. Three days hence, White Wolf and White Hawk would begin their journeys to join the number of King Edward’s fleet.
Jack laid his cloak on the grass and they sat side by side, Blanche leaning close while Jack put his arm around her. Every opportunity to be touching was seized upon.
‘Did you find your memory?’ Blanche asked.
‘Not completely.’ Jack sighed and stretched out his legs. ‘I know more about myself but a lot of it feels like remembering a dream I once had. The only place that feels real is by your side.’
‘Should I call you Jack or John?’ Blanche asked, snuggling down beside him and laying her head on his shoulder.
He considered it. Jack felt more comfortable. John belonged in the past, a dimly remembered acquaintance. He wondered if his memory would ever return completely but discovered he didn’t care one way or the other. A new future lay before him.
‘Call me either. Or better still, call me “my love”.’
‘I can do that,’ Blanche answered.
They kissed, and when they drew apart Jack looked into her eyes.
‘I saw you that day when you called off the attack,’ he said.
‘I know. I called it off even before I knew you were on board. Will you believe that?’
‘I already did,’ Jack replied. ‘But why?’
‘Because yours wasn’t the ship I needed and to take those lives would be wrong.’ She sat up. ‘Perhaps to take any would be wrong.’
She leaned her head on his shoulder and gazed out to sea. ‘We’ll sail to Calais as ordered, but after that I don’t know what I’ll do. If Bleiz Mor sails again it won’t be me beneath the mask. I think Andrey would make a fine captain. He’s trustworthy and honourable. Don’t you agree?’
Jack smiled. ‘I do. And what of you, Blanche? What do you intend to do?’
‘Make a life and a future.’ She took his hand and smiled into his eyes. ‘Perhaps in time, even a marriage.’
‘A marriage?’ Jack grinned. ‘I suppose I’m a rich man now. I command two ships. Are you marrying me for my ships, Blanche?’ he asked wickedly.
‘I must be,’ Blanche murmured, draping her hand in his lap. ‘Unless you can think of another reason?’
Jack slipped his hands to the back of her neck and drew her closer, intent on showing her what compelling reasons there were. Together they fell back on to the blanket. The sun was still warm and they had the evening to themselves. Looking into Blanche’s eyes, Jack knew she had the same thought as he did. Love and excitement, desire and happiness coursed through him.
‘Life,’ he murmured as he leaned in to kiss her. ‘I like that idea. Let’s do it together.’
* * *
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The Scandal of the Season
by Annie Burrows
Chapter One
Cassandra pressed her nose right up to the window pane as the carriage containing Miss Henley of Henley Hall went lurching past the front gate.
‘You can come away from the window now,’ said Aunt Eunice, from the cutting table where she was working. ‘She’s gone.’
Along with all the beautiful clothes Cassandra and her aunts had spent the last few months, often late into the night, creating.
Would Miss Henley wear the white muslin with the periwinkle ribbons and spangled overdress, with which Cassandra had fallen half in love, to a ball? Or, once she reached London, would she discard it in favour of something created by a fashionable town modiste? The way she’d so easily discarded Cassandra the minute she could, apparently. Miss Henley hadn’t even leaned out of the window to wave as she’d gone past just now, the way Cassandra would have done had she been in the coach, and Miss Henley the one whose fingers had developed calluses as she’d sat up till all hours, making sure everything was finished on time.
A heavy, invisible cloak seemed to settle over Cassandra’s shoulders as she thought of how much effort she’d put into making each and every garment that comprised Miss Henley’s wardrobe for her Season. She’d wanted them all to be perfect, because of the way Miss Henley had stood up to her mother, who’d wanted her to take her custom to a more reputable dressmaker with a shop in Exeter.
‘I want nobody but my dear, dear friend, Miss Furnival,’ she’d said, ‘to make the clothes I’m going to wear in town. Because every time I put on something she has made for me, I will feel as if she is with me in spirit and then I shall feel less alone.’
The statement had touched something so deep inside Cassandra, she hadn’t quite known how to deal with the feeling.
‘You won’t be alone,’ Lady Henley, her mother, had said tartly enough to dispel it. ‘I shall be with you. And so will your papa.’
‘Yes, but I shan’t have any friends my own age,’ Miss Henley had objected, with a pout. ‘And everyone will be so...sophisticated and they are bound to make me feel like a mere country miss, and...’
Her big blue eyes had swum with tears. And Lady Henley had promptly capitulated.
‘I suppose at least it will save us a deal of expense,’ she’d said, looking round the front parlour of the cottage where Cassandra’s aunts carried on their business. ‘Which will please your papa. And we shan’t have the fatigue of travelling up to Exeter whenever you need a fitting, either. Very well, my puss. You may have your way.’
‘Spoiled madam,’ Aunt Cordelia had muttered. After the Henleys had left, of course.
‘Still, it is a big order,’ the ever-practical Aunt Eunice had pointed out. ‘And at least Sir Barnabas will pay promptly.’
‘That is the one advantage of having a vicar with evangelical tendencies,’ Aunt Cordelia had replied. ‘He would rain down fire and brimstone on anyone who brought hardship on any of his flock by neglecting to pay what they owe.’
‘Especially two spinster ladies of genteel birth, who have fallen on such hard times that they are forced to earn their living by the needle,’ Aunt Eunice had said, her tongue most decidedly in her cheek.
Cassandra felt her lower lip wobble as Miss Henley’s coach swept round the bend in the lane, taking it briefly out of sight. Would its youngest occupant ever really think of her when she was driving round the park in a curricle tooled by some handsome young buck? Or when some dashing blade was rowing her down the river to a grassy
bank where dozens of dazzling young people would be gathering to take a picnic?
Probably not, she reflected, heaving a sigh.
‘I’m just going to watch,’ she said with a sniff, in belated answer to Aunt Eunice’s comment about getting back to work, ‘until they’ve gone over the bridge.’ It might take her a while to shake off this fit of the dismals and she had no wish to show a glum face to her aunts, since it would smack of ingratitude.
‘You won’t be able to see them going over the bridge,’ Aunt Eunice said, before Aunt Cordelia shushed her.
‘The girl might be able to glimpse the trunks strapped to the roof when they get to the brow of it,’ she said.
Yes, the trunks. And there they were! She could see them now as the coach crested the narrow bridge over the River Teene. Each and every one of them stuffed to bursting with outfits she’d helped create, outfits which were going to London, a place she had never been, nor would ever be likely to go, not now, even though it was an experience most girls of her age and station considered their right.
Because she’d committed a Fatal Error.
‘Leave her be, Eunice,’ said Aunt Cordelia. ‘It can’t be easy watching a stuck-up little madam like that swanning off to town when our Cassy...’
Had been stupid enough to trust in a handsome face and a scarlet jacket, and a kindly demeanour...
Oh, dear, there went her lower lip again.
She dug into the pocket of her apron for a handkerchief, and surreptitiously dabbed at her left eye, which was, in spite of her resolve, starting to leak. She had no intention of letting the aunts see that she was on the verge of tears. It might make them think she was unhappy with her lot. Which would be terribly...disloyal. Because if they hadn’t taken her in and given her honest work, she could easily have ended up lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Or, worse, staying alive and earning her living by...
She pulled herself up short with a sniff. She hadn’t had to endure such horrors. Because the aunts had taken her in. Even though her own mother and stepfather had refused to do as much, claiming she would bring shame on them and blight her younger brother’s reputation, as well.
It was true that Aunt Cordelia, who was not really an aunt but only some sort of cousin of her mother’s, had only opened her door grudgingly. But that hadn’t been anything to do with Cassandra’s actions.
‘We don’t mix socially any longer,’ she’d said gruffly. ‘Not since we’ve set up house together. And if you come to stay the rest of the family will turn their backs on you, because they will consider you’ve been...er...contaminated by our sort of...’
‘Eccentricity,’ Aunt Eunice had concluded when Aunt Cordelia had floundered.
‘Yes, that’s the least unpleasant way they have described our arrangement,’ Aunt Cordelia had mused.
Cassandra hadn’t understood what they’d meant, not then. So she’d simply said that it wouldn’t make any difference, because none of her immediate family would have anything further to do with her anyway. Her stepfather had warned her that he would see to that.
‘Well, he has no say here,’ Aunt Cordelia had said firmly. ‘I’ve never had any time for that old lecher who married your mother for her money. And as for the rest of them...well, they all washed their hands of me many years ago, when I refused to marry some oafish male, and set up home with my good friend instead. But...that’s why you came to me, isn’t it?’
Cassandra had nodded.
‘Then you can stay for a while and see if we can all rub along together.’
And they had. They did.
Cassandra blew her nose. She had become, if not exactly happy, then at least content with her lot. Her aunts never made her feel she was a failure, or a disappointment, or a burden. On the contrary, they made her feel that she was making a valuable contribution to the upkeep of the household, since she was such a swift and neat stitcher. Which was, ironically, thanks to her stepfather’s insistence that she and her mother make all their own clothing rather than pay a dressmaker to do it.
However, on days like this, when the clouds looked as though they might part and let the sun through at any minute, and spears of daffodils were nosing their way through the frosty ground, bringing a sense of hope to everyone else, she was always particularly susceptible to suffering from regrets.
So Cassandra didn’t think she’d better attempt to converse with her aunts until she was in better control of herself. Therefore she stayed where she was, gazing out of the window that overlooked their front garden and the lane which led, eventually, to the road to London. And kept her handkerchief at the ready.
She had blown her nose for the fourth, and positively the last, time when she saw the top of a carriage driving over the hump-backed bridge.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It looks as though Miss Henley has forgotten something. At least...no, actually, I don’t think that is her carriage coming over the bridge. There are no trunks on the roof. And, oh! You should see the horses. Four of them. All greys.’ And all of them a distinct cut above the mixed team of chestnuts and blacks that Sir Barnabas occasionally put to work on his home farm.
Cassandra heard the clatter of scissors falling to the table an instant before feeling the presence of Aunt Eunice at her back.
‘She’s right, Cordelia. A spanking team. And, oh, my word, a crest on the door,’ she said as the coach drew level with the cottage.
‘A crest?’ Now it was Aunt Cordelia’s turn to toss her work aside and join them at the little bow-fronted window. ‘What on earth can somebody of that rank be doing in an out-of-the-way place like Market Gooding? Especially up this end.’ For the lane on which their cottage stood only ran between Henley Hall and the London Road.
‘They must have got lost,’ said Aunt Eunice as the carriage drew to a halt by their front gate. ‘Look, that fellow,’ she said, as one of the pair of footmen, who’d been perched up behind, jumped down and opened their gate, ‘is coming to ask for directions.’
‘Then why is the other one opening the carriage door and letting down the steps?’ asked Aunt Cordelia.
All three ladies fell silent at the first glimpse of the passenger, who was clearly a very grand lady to judge from not only the crest on the door, but also the air of reverence with which the footman held out his arm to help her alight.
‘A lady like that wouldn’t get out to ask her way from the inhabitants of a cottage like this,’ said Aunt Cordelia.
‘She must be a new customer,’ said Cassandra as her footman deftly caught the lady’s muff and the furs which must have been swaddling her, before they scattered in all directions.
‘Not she,’ said Aunt Cordelia. ‘No lady decked out in a carriage dress that fine could possibly want to mar her image by buying anything from a provincial dressmaker.’
Cassandra felt Aunt Eunice swell with indignation at the slur on her creative talent. For she was the one with the eye for seeing just what would suit those who consulted her, as well as the skills of measuring and cutting. Cassandra did the rough basting, and plain stitching nowadays, while Cordelia added the finishing touches. ‘I could turn her out just as fine,’ she growled.
‘Well, yes, you could,’ Aunt Cordelia acknowledged. ‘If you were able to get your hands on that amount of velvet, in just that shade of blue, and if she were to ask you to, but she wouldn’t, would she?’
‘Well, we’re about to find out,’ she retorted, as the footman who’d been stalking up the garden path rapped imperiously on their front door, causing all three ladies to cease their perusal of the vision of sophistication, who was finally ready to take the arm of the second footman, and rush to adopt various industrious poses around the room while Betty, their maid, went to answer the door.
Although Cassandra strained to make out the conversation taking place in the hall, the thick oak door to the parlour kept it frustratingly muffled. Her aunts, who w
ere merely holding the tools of their trade, while leaning in the same direction, were looking equally frustrated.
But at last the door opened and the lady in blue velvet came floating into the room on a cloud of exotic perfume. It was as well they’d watched her arrive, otherwise they would all probably have sat there gaping at the vision of fashionable elegance, flanked on either side by two footmen whose heads almost brushed the ceiling.
As it was, all three of them managed to rise to their feet and drop into suitably deferential curtsies, with an air of aplomb that conveyed the message that they were used to entertaining titled ladies practically every day.
The lady stood there for a moment, looking them over, then abruptly flung her arms wide and headed straight for Cassandra.
‘Darling,’ she said, enveloping her in a highly scented hug. ‘I have found you at last!’
The aunts shot her looks of enquiry, which Cassandra had to return with a shrug. For she had absolutely no idea why this lady was hugging her and calling her darling.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, disentangling herself from the lady’s perfumed embrace. ‘But I think you must be mistaking me for someone else.’
The lady cocked her head to one side, and gave her what Cassandra could only think of as a twinkling look. ‘You are Miss Cassandra Furnival, are you not? Daughter of Julia Hasely, third daughter of the Earl of Sydenham?’
‘Er...yes, I am, but...’
The lady gave a rueful shake of her head and heaved a melodramatic sigh, making Cassandra suspect the lady never did anything without considering the effect it would have upon an audience. ‘I suppose I should have been prepared to find you had forgotten me. Because you were, after all, just the tiniest babe when last we were in the same room together.’ She drew off her gloves and held them out in mid-air. One of the footmen sprang forward just in time to catch them as she let them drop. ‘Which was at your christening,’ she finished saying, looking around as though searching for something. ‘Your mother was a great friend of mine,’ she said, making for one of the chairs reserved for customers. ‘A very great friend,’ she said, disposing herself upon it gracefully. ‘I,’ she announced, with a dazzling smile, ‘am your godmother.’
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