And she’d mentioned him when Lady Perry asked Jane to share all she knew about Charley and Graciela’s prospective neighbors.
Oh dear. “Seldom in London, but I heard he was up from the country a few months ago.”
His gaze held hers.
Fenwick. The Baronet was of an age with Shaldon, but as far as she knew he only moldered along on his estate near Scarborough and…
An old rumor came to her: Fenwick had offered for Lady Shaldon, back when she had been Felicity Landers. Felicity’s grandfather had spotted him for a fortune hunter and sent him packing, and a short while later, the match with Shaldon’s elder brother was announced. When the brother died before the wedding, the title and the fiancée passed to the current earl.
A fluttering started in her chest, just like the one she’d felt the morning Sirena had disappeared. She eased down into the chair. “How may I help, Shaldon? You might as well put your bothersome house guest to good use.”
“You are not a bit bothersome, Jane. Would you fancy a trip to the coast? Or are you desperate to attend the coronation parties?”
The pomp and ceremony of the crowning had only been an excuse for her to come up to London last winter. She had business in London to settle, and soon.
And yet, and yet…Shaldon’s hospitality had allowed her much needed economies, and she was in truth, grateful. Plus, in the past months she had grown fond of Lady Perry, and the young woman might truly be in danger.
“I fear I’m not up to travel by horseback. Might I take one of your traveling chaises, Shaldon?”
The smile lighting his face took years off him.
And, more worrisome, that smile sent a buzz of warmth through her. She’d not felt such buzzing in years, not in many, many, many years, not since Reginald.
And that memory was like a dash of cold water. She was no longer that foolish young girl.
“I’ll send men with you,” he said.
She put a hand to her heart. “I shall go pack. Safe travels, my lord. I will be close behind you.”
When he finally accepted that sleep would not come to him, Fox rose, dealt quickly with the mocking, incomplete canvas, dressed, and departed the cottage through the kitchen. All had been quiet on Perry’s floor. She and her maid were both sleeping.
His fingers itched with the memory of curling around her shoulder and legs. She’d had a hard, worrisome journey from her brother’s place. There was no telling when she’d last slept, for not even his manhandling her up the stairs to her bed last night had awakened her.
Lovely Perry. He needed it to be the last time he touched her. Touching her made him want her. Touching her made him rethink her ghostly usefulness.
All was quiet in the stable. MacEwen had either gone back out or was bedded down here after his late night.
Fox hurriedly saddled his horse. These locals were not stupid—they would see that Perry was flesh and blood, that she was a real woman, young and beautiful and very much alive, no ghost. He needed her to leave before danger found her. As soon as he could, he’d get a message to her brother Charles to come get her. She would despise him for it, but then, her dislike for him had always been his best defense—and hers.
For now, a bruising ride was what he needed, and then he’d pay a midday visit to the inn in Clampton.
It was well on in the morning when the tapping began in Perry’s dream. Her mother was tapping at the door, and she had a pillow over her head. She was a great big girl, too old to throw herself onto a bed. Too old for tears. Too old to say what was wrong.
She sat up, heart pounding, and rubbed her eyes.
Charley had come down to her portrait sitting and said she must have legs under her skirts like the girafe pictured in one of Mama’s French travel books. Fox had kicked him out. Fox hadn’t laughed, nor even smiled, but she’d seen the effort it had taken him to resist. Even so, he’d coaxed her to stop frowning. He’d teased her about leaving him a great glowering subject, tried to make her smile, and finally, put away his brushes, disgusted with her.
Lady Perpetua, if you would but understand your brother is jealous that his sister is taller than him, you wouldn’t be so missish. You’re as sensitive as a raw egg. You’ll grow up and take the ton by storm. For now, it’s impossible to find your portrait in all of your frowning, and I am not going to waste another minute today trying.
And then he’d spent the evening flirting with one of the local squire’s daughters who’d come to dinner. The hurt still stabbed at her.
“Miss.” Jenny stuck her head in.
She pushed back the blanket, confused. Gray light streamed through the windows. Not a fine day, but she couldn’t hear rain either. The green room was her mother’s and—
She’d been in the kitchen. It was the last thing she remembered.
Jenny twisted her hands. “We’ve slept half the day away. Sure, and he must’ve carried you up, miss.”
Up two flights of stairs.
She shoved back the covers and leapt from bed, searching her memories. “Did MacEwen come back?”
“Yes, miss. He carried me up. I remembered that, lessen I dreamt it.”
“We don’t know what MacEwen learned. What he did.”
“No. We don’t.”
“I’m going to wake them.” She searched for her robe.
“Do you not want to dress first? We’ll hear them if they try to leave while you’re dressing.”
Jenny had thrown on her plain brown gown and tucked her hair under a cap, rather hurriedly from the way pieces stuck out. She had a pale morning gown draped over her arm, the stays in her other hand.
And she had a point.
“Yes. No stays though.”
“None, miss? Well, I’m thinking you don’t need them a bit.”
The saucy girl tossed the stays aside, laid out the dress, and started helping Perry out of her gown, biting back a grin. “And also, there’s the matter of that painting upstairs and getting your shape just so.”
Heat crawled up her neck. Until her brothers married, she’d had no girls to share naughty jokes with. And she knew, such familiarity with a maid was not proper, but she couldn’t help laughing. “You wicked girl,” she said, and let Jenny settle the chemise over her head.
And wondered, not for the first time whether she would have survived a childhood in Seven Dials as well as Jenny had.
Perry stepped into the kitchen and the house rattled as the door slammed to.
The fragrance of bacon and toasting bread wafted to her, making her stomach rumble.
“His horse is gone.” She went to look over Jenny’s shoulder. “Eggs too? You’re a fast learner. You’ve done a bang-up job.”
The girl smiled. “And MacEwen?”
“In the stable, tending to his horse.”
Expertly tending to it. There’d been no need for her to concern herself.
“He could use a bit of a grooming himself.” She’d told him so herself in her best Lady Perpetua of the ton voice.
Jenny’s face was tinged with more pink than the fire would induce. She’d noticed the man’s scruffy beard. “Traveling, he was. Will you eat upstairs, my lady?”
“The kitchen is fine.” The kitchen was wonderful. In fact, in the mix of all of this freedom, she’d like to one day try her own hand at cookery.
Jenny set a plate of food on the table. “Shall I fetch him for breakfast when you’ve finished eating?”
“Fetch him now—or, better, take a plate to him. I doubt he’ll come in. He’s lingering in that stable to make sure I don’t take Chestnut out.”
Jenny pulled another plate and began filling it. “He’ll need to wash and have a shave.”
“Can you shave a man, Jenny?” she asked around a bite of bacon.
The girl laughed. “Fergus MacEwen wouldna let me near his neck with a razor, miss.”
“You take him that plate. I’ll pump out a fresh bucket and put it to heat.”
A short while later, the mare sides
tepped, nervous about the extra stirrup hanging at her other side, and Perry shushed her. Chestnut had been trained to the sidesaddle, and the one Perry had brought along with her had mysteriously disappeared.
Never mind. There’d been tack and saddles enough in the stables—her mother’s stables, she reminded herself, and she could saddle a horse as fast as any groom. She rucked up her skirts and swung her leg over the man’s saddle, moving as softly as possible out of the yard, so as not to disturb MacEwen’s shave.
She’d ridden this way many a time with a groom pacing behind, clucking, or Charley racing her, laughing. It was damn liberating. The next time she’d don the breeches she’d brought with her.
If Fox could steal her saddle, she could wear breeches. She could do dratted well anything she wished.
She reached the end of the short drive where the treacherous cliff road merged with the lane that led from Crampton and continued on south to Scarborough across the high moorland.
She pressed a knee to Chestnut and headed south.
The papers in Father’s study showed that the path cut into the cliff had been the one to choose if she wished to dodge any neighbors, and that road was also on her property. It was hers.
Or would be hers when she married. She mentally kicked aside that small rock in her plans and followed the path through the gorse. Whether this wild parcel went with the house, she couldn’t remember. The wild summer grasses stretched tall, this land unplanted and undeveloped. Perhaps it was too rocky to be under cultivation else her mother would have seen to it, like she’d seen to Cransdall.
But Mama had been dead for ten years. Enough time for wild plants to take hold of the earth again.
Perry brushed her eye and clucked at Chestnut to proceed. It was hard to believe that such a desolate landscape could be teeming with men and women sneaking about with goods brought in from the Continent.
Her nerves tingled and Chestnut’s ears swiveled. She drew the horse up. There, in the brush, something or someone dark had moved.
Chapter 13
Perry touched her arm where the blade was tied. She was alone, and the pale green of her gown offered no disguise and her skirts rucked up were an invitation to a cur. Given the chance, a number of Charley’s so-called gentlemen acquaintances wouldn’t hesitate to pull her off her horse if they didn’t recognize her as Shaldon’s daughter.
How much less restraint could she expect from a rough free trader or a soldier cut loose from the wars, homeless and hungry.
Shoosh, Perry. She was scaring herself needlessly. Shaldon’s daughter could be braver.
The dark spot held perfectly still, probably an animal, probably as startled as herself. She pressed the nervous mare nearer, not too close. With a proper start, Chestnut could outrun a two-legged pursuer, even on this unsteady ground.
“I say. Who is there?” she called.
The brush shivered.
She spotted a bit of brown drab, compact and curled in on itself. Her breath eased.
“Please come out. You’re frightening my horse.”
As if on cue, Chestnut snorted. The brown ball uncurled, crawled out and stood in the middle of the path, trembling, fists clenched, shoulders hunched.
It was a boy of about seven, if she was any judge of age. Light brown hair and pale skin peeked from under his cap.
“Good day to you.” She scanned the moorland. He was alone.
Perry dismounted, and the boy shied away. She pulled out an apple she had taken and held it up to the mare, who eyed the boy, too nervous to take the offering.
She forced a laugh. “This is Chestnut. She is wary of you. Will you come close so she can see you mean her no harm?”
He shook his head.
“You do not speak? Are you a ghost then, wandering the moor all alone?”
His eyes widened and she could see they were a light shade of brown. His skin paled even more under the freckles sprinkling his nose.
She took a step. A soft cry escaped his lips.
“What is it, boy?”
“Y-you b-be the gh-ghost.”
Another laugh bubbled up in her, this one real. “A ghost? Of course, I’m not a ghost. I’m but a lady, out for a ride. My name is…”
She should not give her true name. She did not want the locals to make note of her presence. The Justice of the Peace here, if he was in residence, would likely be an acquaintance of her father’s.
“My name is Felicity.” It was her middle name.
Too late, she remembered, it was also her mother’s name. The presence of a Felicity would be just as suspicious and ghost-invoking.
“But my friends call me…Lizzy, and you may also. What is your name?” She took another step.
He trembled more. She reached into her pocket and his little shoulders rose.
“Naught but another apple. You won’t want the one that Chestnut has lipped.” She dropped that into a different pocket. “Would you like this fresh one?”
He eyed it. Licked his lips. Shook his head. He had a mother or someone who had trained him not to take an apple from the stranger who might be the witch from the fairy tale.
“Truly, I am not a ghost. I’m but a woman. A mere woman, and the apples are good, brought from my brother’s tree.” She took a bite, chewed. Swallowed. “They’re sweet. I have another as well as some biscuits.”
His gaze went to her pocket and then darted back to her face. “They say you be she.”
“She?” She took another bite.
His little chin went up and down. “The lady. A…a countess, she were. Thrown off the cliff and murdered.”
Her blood surged. The bite of apple stuck in her throat and all around her the world stopped, only the crash of the distant waves and Chestnut’s earthy breath breaking through her consciousness. She steadied herself against the horse and managed enough saliva to swallow. “Murdered?” Her voice sounded hollow, even to her.
“Aye. ’Afore I was born.” The boy’s tension seemed to ease. “You’d not heard? You’re not from here.”
“No.”
“Everyone here knows. You didn’t know?” A cocky note had crept into his raspy voice, and all of his unease transferred to her.
Her mother had not died in a tragic accident. She’d been murdered.
Her pulse pounded in her ear. Who else knew of this? Surely her father did. And probably her brothers. And maybe Fox. And no one had bothered to tell her?
He cocked his head and eyed her speculatively. “Not going to keel over, are you?”
Keel over? This was a rude little man.
Well, she had weathered worse than this among the ton, and she needed information. “You’ve startled me, boy.” She threw away her apple core and pulled out a cloth-wrapped stack of the biscuits that had dried out overnight. “Come along and have a biscuit with me, and tell me this ghost story, and then you may have my last apple, and perhaps Chestnut will feel comfortable enough to eat hers.”
Still holding the reins, she unwrapped her package, took a biscuit, and offered him one.
He came close enough to accept one. A little thing, he was, thin, but not starved, with a face strained with too much worry for a child. She wondered if it was all due to the fright she’d given him.
“Now. You may call me Lizzy. What shall I call you?”
His chewing stopped. He frowned, chewed some more, swallowed, and shrugged. “Pip.”
She handed him another biscuit. “Pip. Short for Phillip?”
The boy nodded solemnly.
“A lovely strong name. Tell me this ghost story.”
“There once was a lady who lived there in Gorse Cottage—not allus, only sommat time she visited, see. But on one of her stays, late one night, someone came and threw her over the cliff and bashed her brains out all over the rocks.”
Her stomach flipped again and a tingling started in her hands.
He finished his biscuit. “And not just her, her maid and her coachman too.”
Fire
roared through her, followed by rivers of ice, spots dancing in her vision.
Must not faint, Perry. Must not. She made her voice calm. “Who would do such a horrible thing?”
He lifted a shoulder and eyed the napkin. She gave him another biscuit. “No one ever says who, least not around me.”
“But they know who?”
His brows drew together. “They’re scared.”
Her skin rippled. If they were scared, then the murderer was still alive and around. “I see. Do they know why she and her people were killed?”
“On account of the French, sommat said, but Gram says no Frenchies landed here and none ran around here without us knowing. No one comes through Clampton without us seeing.”
“I did.” But she’d taken a side road that skirted the town, and she’d made that stretch of the journey in early dawn.
He studied her. “Mayhap they thought you were her. She comes when there’s a tenant at Gorse Cottage.”
More astonishing revelations. Her mind reeled with them. “She comes here,” she said woodenly. She was surely a living woman, and not a ghost.
Could Mama still be alive?
“Drives the tenants away. Will you be eatin’ that last one?”
She handed him the biscuit. Her mother’s ghost came here whenever there was a tenant.
“Is there often a tenant?”
“No. On account of her. And she keeps all the barrels out of her house. Don’t bother with the other buildings though so they—
His mouth clamped shut. Only a child, but he knew the free traders’ code.
“I see.” She stopped and pressed her eyes closed. This was just like one of her father’s schemes, resurrecting her mother to scare smugglers away. And did he know she’d been murdered, or was that merely the wild suspicion of unsophisticated rustics? The road was precarious enough that an accidental death was not out of the question.
“Where you be staying, Lizzy?”
When she opened her eyes, he was watching her, as savvy as any child of the London streets.
The Counterfeit Lady_A Regency Romance Page 8