A Husband's Wicked Ways

by Jane Feather

  It was her turn to do her part now.

  The hackney swayed sharply as it turned a corner, and the iron wheels bumped unevenly over the cobbles before it came to a halt. Aurelia drew aside the leather flap that served as a curtain and peered out. They were in the courtyard of an inn.

  “’Ere y’are, ma’am. The Bell, Woodstreet. Just as ye asked,” the jarvey said a trifle belligerently in case she should accuse him of making a mistake.

  “Thank you,” she said, alighting from the carriage. “What do I owe you?”

  “Sixpence,” he said, reaching down a mitten-clad hand.

  Aurelia gave him sixpence halfpenny and he gave her a gratified tug of his forelock. “You want I should call the landlord from the inn, ma’am?”

  “No, thank you. I can manage quite well.” She smiled a dismissal, picked up her cloakbag, and turned resolutely towards the inn.

  The back door led directly from the stable courtyard into the taproom. It was crowded, even at this hour, the long benches filled with folk eating breakfast. The sound of a post horn brought instant activity, people leaping up from the benches, cramming last mouthfuls, draining ale tankards, as they surged to the yard.

  It was a staging inn, Aurelia finally realized. The public stages came in here from all over the countryside and left again with full complements. Well, she reflected, it was certainly the ideal place to be anonymous. No one she knew would ever dream of frequenting such a place. And where was the colonel?

  She looked around, searching for his tall, large frame somewhere in the crowd. He would be easy to spot with that commanding presence, the restrained elegance of his dress. Perhaps he wasn’t here yet. Maybe he’d been held up. Maybe he wasn’t coming…the last thought brought a stab of disappointment that surprised her.

  The taproom was quieter now as the stagecoach passengers departed. Others were waiting for the next stage to wherever they were going, but the initial chaos had quietened. Aurelia went back to the door and stood looking out into the stable courtyard. He would come in this way. Either by carriage or on horseback he would turn in beneath the archway from the street into the yard.

  Then she felt her scalp prickle and a current of excitement ran up her spine. He was here, and of course he wouldn’t look as she was expecting him to look. The man was a spy. He was on a mission. Colonel, Sir Greville Falconer was not going to stroll under the archway into the yard. He would be somebody else.

  Slowly she turned back to the taproom and looked around, this time with new eyes. She saw him almost immediately. He was hunched over an ale mug at a table close to the inglenook. An old cloak trailed on the ground, gnarled hands in fingerless gloves curled around the tankard. A greasy cap was pulled down low on his forehead. But she knew him immediately.

  Quietly she crossed the sawdust-littered floor. She didn’t greet him, however, merely took a seat on the bench opposite and surveyed him. Those deep gray eyes were unmistakable, and she wondered if he ever needed to disguise them and, if so, how he did it.

  “Well done,” he said softly. “I expected it to take you rather longer.” He reached into the pocket of his stained waistcoat and took out a key. “Go up to the second floor…the second door on the left.” He slid the key across the table. “Dress yourself in the clothes in the armoire. I’ll wait here.”

  Aurelia took the key. Part of her wanted to laugh at this cloak-and-dagger game, but the strange flutter of alarm in her gut told her it was definitely not a laughing matter. There was only one explanation. Greville Falconer didn’t want anyone to know where he was. There were people in this world who wanted him dead, Frederick had said as much. It seemed such a dramatic thought, but drama had entered her life with a grand fanfare when she’d learned the truth about Frederick.

  Without a word she rose from the table and made for the staircase at the corner of the taproom. It twisted and creaked its way to the second floor, where she found the door, fitted the key in the lock, and turned it. The door swung open onto a small chamber, lit by a smelly tallow candle on a rickety table under the window. A sullen fire smoldered in the grate, but she was grateful for what little warmth it gave as she surveyed the contents of the armoire and contemplated removing her own warm garments in favor of the worn serge dress and cloak hanging in the cupboard.

  Was he testing her again with this disguise? Or was it truly necessary?

  If it was necessary, she thought with another flutter of alarm, she was getting into deeper waters than she had bargained for. She’d agreed to help ease his social path, not racket around the countryside dressed in rags pretending to be someone she wasn’t. But she found some comfort in the knowledge that in this disguise no one would recognize her. She held up the clothes with a grimace of distaste. They seemed clean enough, for which she was grateful, and she could keep her own underclothes and woolen stockings. She had to change her boots, however, for a pair of down-at-heel and ill-fitting leather clogs with paste buckles.

  She made the transformation as rapidly as she could, shivering the while. She thrust her own clothes into her cloakbag, reluctantly relinquishing the pelisse. Clearly, the rest of this journey would be accomplished by public stage, with no hot bricks to alleviate the cold. The awful thought occurred that he might be expecting them to ride as outside passengers on the roof.

  That would be too much, Aurelia decided, setting off downstairs again. She had enough money of her own to insist on an inside seat, and if it upset the colonel, or whatever he was in his present guise, then so be it. Heartened by this somewhat militant frame of mind, she reentered the taproom. He was still sitting where she’d left him, tankard and a plate of bacon in front of him.

  She took a seat opposite again. “I think it’s your turn to provide breakfast, sir.”

  For answer he turned and growled in the general direction of a potboy who was scurrying between the tables. “Bread an’ bacon do ye?” the colonel demanded of the wench sitting opposite him.

  “Aye, if ’n you please, sir,” she returned with a faint country accent to match his own. Rather convincing she thought. If she could manage to see her part as a game, in a competition of some kind, it would provide distance and maybe she would stop envisaging dangers where there were none.

  He waved at his plate when the lad dodged across to them. “Same again fer the wife.”

  The boy went off and Greville looked at Aurelia, one eyebrow slightly lifted. “Quite the actress you are.”

  For some reason the compliment pleased her, but she did her best to hide it. “Does it surprise you?”

  “A certain amount. I wasn’t sure how good you’d be, but I see I need have no fears.”

  “And if I was terrible, what would you have done?” She regarded him closely.

  He took a deep draft of his ale and set the tankard down. “If you had not managed to work out who I was, or if you had in any way balked at the costume, or the part you must play, I would have sent you back to Cavendish Square,” he stated flatly. “I have no intention of endangering you in any way, or of making you uncomfortable. Not everyone is suited to this work.”

  “I see.” She drummed her fingers on the stained table. He was telling her that she could still back out, even now. But if she didn’t, then Aurelia knew there would be no turning back, because she would not allow herself to do so. Did she have sufficient courage to see this through?

  She drew in a sharp breath. “So, who are we?”

  If he felt relief, he gave so sign, merely answered, “A poor tenant farmer and his wife coming back from London. You’ve been staying with your sister, helping her with her children during her confinement, and I came to fetch you back because the chickens and the kitchen garden are going to rack and ruin in your absence, and I’ve enough on my plate with my own farmwork and the hours I have to put in on the landlord’s fields.” His voice was his own, but so soft as to be almost impossible to hear outside the immediate area around their table. “Clear enough?”

  “Clear enough. Bu
t, poor or not, we’d better not be traveling as outside passengers.”

  At that he grinned, a quick flash of white teeth and a laughing glint in his eyes. “No, ma’am, that won’t be necessary. We may be humble folk, but I’ve coin enough for an inside seat.”

  She nodded, but said nothing as the lad came up with a hunk of barley bread on a plate piled high with fried bacon, and a tankard of ale, and set both in front of her.

  “I suppose coffee is out of the question,” she murmured when the boy had gone off.

  “Remember your part,” he admonished, taking another swig of ale.

  Aurelia shrugged, broke off a piece of bread, piled it with bacon, and took a large mouthful. It was surprisingly good, and so was the ale. The bacon was salty, the ale thirst-quenching. “Where is our farm situated?” she inquired, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand in the absence of any napkinlike refinements.

  “Barnet…it’s only a day’s coach journey.”

  “I’m relieved.” She took another sip of ale. “And our exact destination? Or am I to be kept in the dark about that?”

  “I see no reason why you should be,” he said mildly. “We are going to a farm…you will not, however, be expected to assume the duties of a farmer’s wife any more than I will be bringing in the cows from the corn.”

  He pushed back from the table as the clock in the yard struck the half hour. “The stage will be here in five minutes. It might be wise to find the outhouse. I believe it’s at the end of the kitchen garden.”

  He swung a leg over the bench and stood up. “I’ll settle up here.”

  Aurelia nodded and rose to her feet. The outhouse of a coaching station was not an appealing proposition, but it was probably a wise precaution. The public stage kept to a schedule and wouldn’t stop to order. Or so she assumed.

  The experience was every bit as unpleasant as she’d expected, and she couldn’t help a flash of envy when she saw Greville emerge from behind one of the stable buildings in the innyard. He had had no need to wrestle with skirt and petticoats over a stinking hole in a crusted wooden plank.

  The coach was in the yard, passengers piling in as the coachman and ostlers fastened baggage to the roof. “Quick,” Greville said in an urgent whisper. In the same breath he lifted Aurelia up into the carriage with a deft maneuver that left a stout dame with a birdcage muttering imprecations.

  Aurelia saw the point immediately. There was a single corner seat left by the window on the far side. She took it, refusing to consider for a second whether someone else had a prior claim. Greville had stood back with a courteous hand to help the stout woman and her birdcage into the coach. She huffed, but took the seat next to Aurelia, settling her skirts and her birdcage.

  “Pretty bird…is it a parrot?” Aurelia inquired, trying to remember the slight rustic twang.

  “Bless you, no, m’dear. ’Tis a parakeet,” the woman declared, suddenly all smiles. “Belongs to my Jake…he’s on a ship, an’ he brought ’im back from Jamaica.” She pushed her fingers through the bars of the cage. “Eh, birdie…birdie…say good mornin’ to the lady.”

  “Does he really talk?” Aurelia was fascinated despite the disconcerting sense of living in a dream. In her wildest fantasies she would never have seen herself on a public coach chatting amiably with a peasant woman about a caged bird.

  “Never stops when ’e gets the mood on ’im, bless ’im. So where’s ’ome, m’dear?” Her neighbor wriggled comfortably into her seat and seemed settled for a cozy chat.

  Greville had climbed in last and accepted perforce one of the middle seats. He leaned back, arms folded, and immediately closed his eyes. To Aurelia’s astonishment he seemed to be sound asleep before the carriage had clattered and rattled through the archway onto the street.

  He stayed asleep, unmoving, breathing silently and rhythmically while the coach left the town streets.

  “Eh, I can’t stand the racket. Can you, dearie?” Aurelia’s neighbor inquired comfortably as the noise of the streets faded and they began the climb to Hampstead Heath. “Give me the peace o’ the countryside, eh?”

  “Aye,” Aurelia agreed, both weary and wary. “All that racket gives me the headache.”

  “Me too, dearie.” The woman patted Aurelia’s knee. “So what took ye t’ the city, then?”

  “My sister.” Aurelia produced the required story, and as she did so, she became aware that Greville was wide-awake, although his eyes remained closed. Yet she would have sworn he’d been sound asleep until she’d begun to spin her narrative. Presumably he could hear in his sleep. He could probably see behind closed eyelids, too, she reflected somewhat sardonically. She wouldn’t put anything past him.

  The long day wore on. They crossed Hampstead Heath with much anxious mutterings about highwaymen, the parakeet kept up an endless succession of whistles, Greville kept his eyes closed, and sometimes Aurelia was certain he was sound asleep, and at others he would be wide-awake…if the movement of the coach changed, if the speed altered. She began to play a game. Every once in a while she would say something that went a little adrift from the script, just a small comment that no one would really notice, but every time, Greville awoke. She could see it in the slight stiffening of his shoulders, a tiny flutter of his eyelids, even though his breathing didn’t change.

  Fascinating…but also enviable, because he was most definitely sleeping the rest of the time, even if he was sleeping like a cat with a secondary sense to alert him to danger. And Aurelia could not imagine sleeping in the miserable discomfort of this crowded, jouncing vehicle, with a whistling parakeet, and a fellow passenger eating pickled onions, and her neighbor who produced a smoked-eel pie that she generously offered to share.

  Faintly Aurelia refused the generosity and closed her own eyes. Sleep was not forthcoming, but eventually the coach drove through a village and turned into a coaching yard. It was midafternoon. Ostlers raced forward to change the horses.

  “This is Barnet…this is Barnet…,” the coachman intoned. “’Alf an ’our, ladies an’ gennelmen. Get yer victuals ’ere. Next stop Watford.”

  Greville uncurled himself and staggered as stiffly as his fellow passengers out of the coach. Except that Aurelia, as she accepted his hand to the cobbles, could see that he was not in the least bit cramped and was enviably rested. She resisted the urge to wince as her own cramped muscles objected.

  “What now?” The spirit of adventure was lacking in her voice.

  “The worst is over.”

  “You relieve my mind.”

  “Come.” He picked up her cloakbag, took her arm, and led her towards the inn.

  The establishment was as crowded as the one in Cheapside had been, and their fellow passengers surged into the taproom calling for ale and food. “Are we staying here?” Aurelia asked, trying not to show how the prospect dismayed her.

  “No,” Greville replied, relieving her mind. “Just long enough for me to find a pony and trap somewhere. Sit down here.” He propelled her towards a spindly chair in a dark corner of the taproom and set the cloakbag down on the floor. “I’ll order some refreshment.”

  “I’d rather stand,” Aurelia said. “I’ve been sitting cramped for an eternity, I need to stretch my legs.”

  “As you wish.” He turned and plunged into the gabbling throng. He held himself more upright now, Aurelia noticed. Presumably he felt fairly safe from recognition in an ordinary coaching inn so far from town.

  She rolled her shoulders to get the cricks out and paced the floor for a few minutes until Greville came back with two overflowing tankards. “Porter,” he declared, setting them down on the table by the chair. “Do you a world of good.”

  Aurelia surveyed the dark brown contents of the tankard with disfavor. She associated the drink with laborers and farmhands, which was, of course, entirely appropriate to her present guise. She lifted the tankard and took a cautious sip. It was bitter and tasted of burned malt.

  “It’s an acquired taste,” Greville said
, watching her with amusement as he drank his own with evident enthusiasm.

  “I’m not sure I wish to acquire it.” She set the tankard down. “Besides, I have other, more pressing needs.” She turned and went reluctantly in search of what would inevitably be another noxious privy.

  When she returned through the stable yard, Greville, holding her cloakbag, was talking to an ostler. He raised a beckoning hand when he saw her and turned away from the stable hand as she came over to him. “The landlord has a gig for hire, so if you’re ready, we’ll be on our way.”

  “More than ready. How far must we go?”

  “Five miles…an hour, perhaps.” He looked over to where the ostler was emerging from one of the outbuildings, leading an emaciated nag. “On second thoughts, maybe two, if he’s intending to put that beast between the traces.”

  It seemed that he was. In ten minutes Aurelia was ensconced on the seat of the landlord’s gig, Greville beside her, holding the nag’s reins. He clicked his tongue and the horse moved forward, pulling the light, two-wheeled carriage onto the post road.

  A stage coach was bowling down the road towards the inn, and Greville yanked the gig to the side of the road just in time as the heavy vehicle clattered past, the postilion blowing his horn.

  “The sooner we get off the highway the better,” Greville muttered. “I’m fairly certain we turn left at the crossroads up ahead.”

  “How do you know where we’re going? I thought you’d been out of England for years.”

  “So I have. But I still know the countryside.”

  “And you know people around here?” Aurelia pressed.