The Untold Tale of the Winter Duchess: A Historical Regency Romance Novel

by Emma Linfield

  He picked up another tally, this one from the kitchen. It was more troubling. After Lillian had been attacked in the garden, Sebastian had ordered additional guards around the castle. While that nominally made them all more secure, it also meant that the stores of food for humans were being eaten up at a greater rate.

  Sebastian sighed, and drummed his fingers on the ledger. It seemed that in solving one problem, he had created another. To make matters worse, the villagers were looking to the castle to alleviate their shortfalls. On top of that, two of his best hunters were tucked into cots in the Chapel as they waited through their bout of measles.

  He paced around the schoolroom. He knew how to fight enemy soldiers. But Sebastian also knew that as many soldiers were brought down by dysentery and similar illnesses as were killed in combat. Battles could be fought as much in the healers’ tents as on the field.

  The short time of daylight was beginning to wane. As he paced, Sebastian glanced out the schoolroom window, which faced the mountain and the high meadow where his mother’s old horse spent her summers. There seemed to be a glow up on the higher slopes. He watched it for a moment with curiosity, then with growing horror.

  The forest was afire.

  Sebastian hurried to the stairs, and started down them. He was met by Evans. “Your Grace . . .”

  “I saw it. Get all of the outlying families into the castle. Put anyone who is sick into the chapel, and keep those families separate from anyone who has not had measles.”

  “And the forest, Your Grace?”

  “Send the able-bodied men to the mill-race. The mill stream should hold the fire on the other side for a time. We can work from there. I’ll be with them directly, just as soon as I can change into work boots.”

  Sebastian hurried to his rooms where his valet already had a rough set of work clothes waiting for him.

  “Thank you, Smithers. Will you come with us?”

  “Yes, Your Grace. My sister lives near the forest edge, and I’d come anyway.”

  “Thank you, Smithers. But I have a favor to ask of you, because I think it will be more nearly suited to your special skills. Will you help with sorting out the wounded, the ill, and the able bodied? As well as those who might be contagious in short order?”

  “That I will, Your Grace, and right gladly. I would go wield a shovel with the rest, but I will own that I can do as you have asked.”

  “You might yet be on the fire lines. I am at a loss as to how this could have started with snow on the ground. Either someone has been remarkably careless or it was deliberately set.”

  “Perhaps a rival estate, Your Grace?”

  “Not one of our neighbors, of that I am sure. This blaze could just as easily jump from our lands to theirs. Nor would I think it of any of them. But that does remind me of something.”

  Sebastian, now clad in rough workman’s clothing, stepped to the door and said to the footman stationed there, “Take a message to Evans. Tell him to send runners to our neighbors. They will want to protect their forests if such a thing is possible.”

  Sebastian then hurried from his rooms, with Smithers trailing behind him, and the footman taking off at a run for the butlery.

  Once outside, he could see that the fire was more localized than he feared. It was at the empty stable where he had first met Lillian. “Thank God for small favors,” he muttered to Smithers, who hurried away from him to the chapel where his skills as a body servant could be put to use caring for the sick.

  A cluster of men carrying axes, sacks, and pails stood near the mill race. The cooper, Ronald Teggly, was there. He and Tink Littlesmith were loading barrels of water onto a cart that was hitched to a team of oxen. The off ox bawled out a protest, while the near ox grumbled low in his throat. Neither of them liked the scent of smoke that came heavy and thick from the upper slope.

  As Sebastian neared the group, another thought came to him. He tapped the shoulder of a long-legged youth. “Go up to the castle and ask for Evans. Tell him the guards are to stay on duty and on no account should they leave the castle. Got that?”

  The boy bobbed and tugged at his forelock, old style. “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “Then go!”

  The boy took off at a ground eating lope, keeping to the soft snow at the side of the road. Smart lad. Staying off the ice. I’ll have to learn his name later.

  Having done what he could for the safety of his family, staff, and the less able villagers who would soon be gathering at the castle, he joined the bucket brigade that was filling the barrels. The smith was their fire marshal, dealing as he did with flammable materials all day long, and he already had the wood cutters headed upslope to cut a firebreak, and the gardeners to shovel snow onto the mounting flames.

  If they hurried, they could contain the blaze before it reached the forest. Even though they might lose the shed, it was not a terribly valuable building. The feed and hay had been transferred to the lower barn when the horses were moved. But why was it burning now?

  The water wagon was filled, and Sebastian joined the ox handler as he led the team up the track to the upper meadow. As they neared the clearing, there was a crash, and there came a shout. Sebastian looked up. A spark had caught the upper branches of a pine that stood close to the shed. The structure had collapsed in a shower of sparks, and the gardeners and farmers were shoveling snow onto it as fast as they could scoop it up.

  The wood cutters were running to the tree as Sebastian and the ox cart pulled into the clearing. There was a steady ring of axes biting into wood as two experienced axe men coordinated with each other to create a wedge on the side closest the fire. As they worked, another team steadily pulled, while a fifth man counted off the cadence. It was a dance tune, Sebastian realized.

  As the two teams neared the center of the tree, the counter cried out, “Hold! Hold! Saws only!”

  The two axe men jumped back, and the saw team bent their backs to their labor. “See-saw, pull the saw,” the counter now sang. With one last stroke the now flaming tree fell back onto the ruin of the hut. It sent up a shower of sparks that had a team of men and boys with wet sacks running for the flying embers.

  The shovel team heaved more snow onto the flames and at last they died down to nothing.

  The fire crew gathered around the water wagon where the wagon master was ladling out cups of strong tea to the crew. “We dunnit, boys!” he shouted out.

  A cheer went up from the assembled crowd. “An’ here’s the Duke as fought the fire among us,” he added. “Your Grace, would you care to say a word?”

  Sebastian hopped up on the wagon bed. “No one wants to hear a long speech after fighting fire in the heat and cold. My thanks to you all!” He then had the good sense to give over to the blacksmith, who quickly organized a fire watch team lest the fire flare up again, and two hunters to also keep watch in case the arsonists returned to try to finish the job.

  Sebastian nodded his approval when one of the hunters asked if they should patrol the wood and see if they could find any sign of the perpetrators. “It’s a small chance in all this snow, now that the fire fighters have trampled through and through. But we might find something.”

  The tired men started back down the hill. They carried covered lanterns to show them the way, for no one wanted to carry a torch after battling the conflagration. Some of the lanterns framed candles in glass, but others were dark lanterns, with patterns cut in the sides of pieces of metal. These sent eerie patterns of flecked light that seemed to spatter against the snow laden boughs of the evergreens along the trail. Sebastian walked among them, companionably. Most of them he had known when he was a boy. Some had shared his childhood escapades. He had a surreal feeling, almost as if they were extensions of himself and that they were all part of a greater organism. Just foolishness, sheer fatigue.

  He chided himself for thinking such nonsense. Yet there it was, a feeling of connectedness that he never felt in London.

  As they walked, it began to snow. “Gar
n!” one of the men exclaimed. “Thar goes ony chanct o’ trackin’ em.”

  “Ted Rowe might find some’at,” another commented. “His hounds are that good.”

  Sebastian felt himself surrounded with a susurrus of comment, then the first speaker asked, “Yer Grace, do you think Ted’s dogs have a chance?”

  Sebastian roused himself from the blank-minded fog he had sunk into. “A chance, to be sure. Mr. Rowe is a fine dog handler and tracker. If there is ought to be found, I think he will find it.”

  “That’s what I think, too,” the man said. There was a general murmur of assent, then the blacksmith spoke up. “Find ‘un er not, some ‘un set that. Twarn’t natural.”

  “That’s so,” chimed in the cooper. “Building in the center of a field of snow. Not logical to think it just went up in fire.”

  “But who would want to?” Sebastian asked thoughtfully. “Everyone who lives here knows that it was emptied when we brought the horses down to the lower barns. There was nothing to steal and only dubious shelter.”

  “It’s a puzzle, Your Grace,” the blacksmith shook his head from side to side, as if to make the mystery go away.

  “That it is,” said the cooper, and there was a general assent all around.

  The snow was falling thick and heavy by the time they arrived back at the castle. Sebastian checked on the folk now being housed in the chapel. Most were too ill to care, but others were worried about their homes. Sebastian was able to reassure them that the fire was out and got no farther than the meadow, before heading on up the hill to the castle.

  Chapter 31

  Lillian woke in the later evening. Her head felt clear, her skin was less itchy, and she was hungry. A young maid she had not met before parted the curtains slightly. “Hello, Miss Doyle. I’m Sarah. Martha Louisa had to step out for a bit. We’ve quite a hubbub going on downstairs.”

  “What happened? What is going on?” Lillian struggled to sit up, and found she felt remarkably weak.

  “Sum’un set the shed in the upper meadow afire.”

  “Oh, no! The horses.”

  “Not to worry, miss. They’s been brung down this last se’nnight or more. Soon as it started all this extra snowing.”

  “Oh, that is good. But why would it burn like that?”

  “Vagabonds most like. Gypsies, maybe. Hard to say with the weather so cold. Don’t think I’ve ever seen it like this, Miss Doyle. ‘Deed I don’t.”

  “Nor have I,” Lillian replied. “I hate to trouble you, but is there something to eat? I’m starving.”

  “I don’t wonder that you are, Miss. You’ve had a raging fever these last three days, and we’ve been hard put to get anything down you. There’s some chicken soup on the hob, and hot water for tea. You can even have a bit of toast if you can manage it.”

  “It sounds wonderful,” Lillian said eagerly. She was surprised when Sarah brought the bowl of soup, how little of it she could eat. After scarcely more than half a cup of soup and a scrap toast, she felt as full as if she had eaten a seven-course meal.

  “’Tis not to be wondered at,” Sarah explained. “You’ve had so little to eat, your stomach has shrunk. You’ll be able to eat a little more later on, I don’t doubt. Martha Louisa will be pleased that you’ve had something

  “Can we draw back these curtains? I feel as if I am in a dungeon.”

  “Oh, no, Miss. You have measles, and you don’t want them to settle in your eyes. You need the dark to help your eyes heal. But I can sit outside the curtain and read to you if you wish.”

  “Thank you, Sarah,” Lillian said. “I feel as if I shall go mad if I must sit here in the dark alone.”

  As it turned out, listening to Sarah read was almost as bad as sitting alone. The maid read haltingly, stumbling over words and sometimes having to spell them out. Finally, Lillian had heard enough. “Sarah, do you know any songs?”

  “Why, yes, Miss. I know all the hymns in the hymnal, and I can sing some silly songs for children, too.”

  “I think I would like to hear a silly song, if it would not trouble you too much.”

  “To be sure, Miss Doyle.” Sarah began singing a very silly song about a cockerel who did not obey his mother and father and passed his idle time teasing a fox.

  Sarah was just finishing up the part where the silly cockerel is about to be eaten, but keeps putting it off by suggesting more and more ridiculous things to go into a stew, when Martha Louisa entered the room.

  Even though she could not see her, Lillian recognized her quick, firm step. “Miss Doyle is awake?” Martha Louisa asked.

  “Yes, she is!” Lillian replied. “Thank you both for taking care of me. I must have been a great deal of trouble.”

  “No more than some and not so much as others,” Martha Louisa said. Then to the maid, “Did she eat something, Sarah?”

  “Yes, Miss Martha Louisa. ‘Most half a cup of broth and a bite of toast. She wanted the curtains drawn back, but I said I would sit here and amuse her until you returned.”

  “Most proper,” Martha Louisa assured her. “We need to keep that curtain drawn until the physician has a look. That could be a bit, because even with the help that the Duke is recruiting for him, he is barely getting to sleep in snatches, poor man.”

  “Is it very bad, then?” Lillian asked.

  “Bad enough, Miss Doyle, but not so bad as it might be. The Duke has brought the villagers in from the outlying areas and is housing them here in the lower rooms. It is a right madhouse below stairs, what with one thing and another. I was helping Mr. Evans and Mrs. Blanchard create some order. That is why I was not here to greet you when you awakened.”

  “That is quite all right, Martha Louisa. I am glad that you could help. Are you still needed?”

  “I think not. Word just came down from the upper meadow that the fire is out. Many of the folk who live nearby will probably go home in the morning, since the fire did not spread as we feared.”

  “Sarah mentioned that. Was anyone hurt?”

  “No one hurt. Good thing they brought the horses down before real cold hit. You and the boys went to the stable to visit them not long before you became ill.”

  “I do think I remember. It is all a little hazy. I remember we were tying greens for Christmas day. And there was a young woman who was blind. But she could make little cornucopias from thread almost like lightning.”

  “Yes. Pretty little thing. She lost her sight after the last epidemic of measles. A pity, really. She was promised to the butcher’s boy, but his father and mother called it off. Said he didn’t need to be saddled with a cripple. Goodness knows what will become of the child now.”

  “Surely she is not of marriageable age? I thought her scarcely twelve.”

  “Twelve come June. They was promised, but not to be wed until she turned sixteen. T’was to give her mum help at home while her little brothers and sisters were still young.”

  “Her mother is a widow, then?”

  “Yes, and one of the ones brought in from the forest edge.”

  “God’s blessing on the Duke for that,” Sarah said piously.

  “Indeed,” Martha Louisa said briskly. “It will save a mort o’ tramping through the snow checking on folks in this weather.”

  “What is it doing outside?” Lillian asked, aching to have the obscuring curtain pulled back.”

  “It’s snowing again, Miss Doyle. Started in not long past midnight, shortly after the menfolk were mostly up the mountain fighting fire in the upper meadow. It is out now, and they should be back indoors shortly.”

  “What time is it?” Lillian asked.

  “Not long before dawn.” Martha Louisa stifled a yawn. “It has been quite an ordeal getting everyone settled with a place to sleep. The large dining hall is packed to the brim, as well as every guest room filled.”

  “You sound as if you need some sleep, Martha Louisa,” Lillian said.

  “I could doze a little. I’ll just sit here by the fire and put my feet
up, if you don’t mind, Miss Lillian.”

  “Please make yourself comfortable, Martha Louisa. Perhaps Sarah could sing another song or two. She has a pleasing voice, and it helps to pass the time.”

  “I’d be glad to, Miss Doyle.”

  “One of those long ballads,” Martha Louisa requested. “Perhaps that one about Cucuchlain, that you were singing over the washing up a night or two ago.

  Chapter 32

  When Sebastian returned to the castle, he found it packed to the rafters with villagers brought in from the outskirts, or so it seemed. Evans met him at the front door, and held one finger over his lips. They tiptoed into the library and closed the doors.