It was then that the ridiculousness of the situation overwhelmed him and he found his lips twitching. ‘I am sure Satan would agree with you.’ The bark of laughter escaped then, closely followed by another. Then she began to snigger next to him and before they knew it, they were both clutching their ribs and brushing tears from their eyes, because really what else could they do under the mortifying circumstances? After what seemed like an eternity, peace descended.
‘Is it safe to turn around?’
Jamie glanced behind him and saw a smug-looking Satan standing proudly with the flirty Orange Blossom nuzzling his neck affectionately. ‘I believe their business is concluded for the day. At least I hope it is.’
‘I hope it is, too. I need to get home. But it seems unnecessarily cruel to split them up now, don’t you think? They do appear to be very fond of each other.’
Fond of each other! Such a whimsical explanation for what had just occurred, as if the two horses experienced more than the primal urge to mate, and so charmingly just like her to view it that way. ‘Then I shall accompany you down to the end of the lane, Miss Reeves, so our lovestruck horses can spend a little more time in each other’s company.’
Deciding to abandon his easel until later, Jamie followed her back towards the animals and lifted her swiftly on to her saddle before hauling himself on to Satan. They rode in slightly uncomfortable silence for a few minutes, far too close as apparently their horses could not bear to be too far apart, and Jamie searched his mind for something to talk about which would break the strained tension. In the end, it was Miss Reeves who spoke first.
‘Well, at least we have our ending now.’
‘We do?’ Surely she was not suggesting they finished a children’s books with the exuberant joining of two horses!
‘Isn’t it obvious? The book will have to finish with a wedding now that Satan has compromised Orange Blossom.’
‘You want our horses to get married?’ What a ridiculously charming and splendidly brilliant idea. Already he could picture Satan in a jaunty beaver hat while his bride would have flowers woven into her mane. He would be best man and Miss Freckles would be the bridesmaid, and they would leave the church under an arch of crossed carrots held in the guests’ hands like swords, delicate confetti rose petals fluttering in the air.
‘Of course! Orange Blossom has been thoroughly ruined, Captain Warriner. A wedding is only proper. The silly and intrepid Miss Freckles inadvertently instigated their love story when she foolhardily climbed up that tree. It is the perfect happy ending.’
They reached the end of the lane and both dithered, not that Jamie minded. ‘My father will be angry if I am late home again. He is a stickler for timekeeping and quite rigid in his schedule. Will I see you tomorrow? Unless you are already quite fed up with all of the trouble I bring to your door, Captain Warriner.’
‘I always ride by the river at two. We soldiers are creatures of habit.’
She beamed at him and Jamie felt his heart warm at the sight. ‘Then I shall bid you good afternoon, Captain Warriner.’
She nudged her pony forward and Jamie realised he did not want her to go. ‘Miss Reeves!’ She turned around, pretty eyes questioning, the late afternoon sun picking out the copper fire in the single tendril of hair poking out of her plain bonnet. ‘Seeing as our horses are betrothed, perhaps you should call me Jamie. Everyone else does.’
‘That would be nice. Until tomorrow... Jamie.’ Except when everyone else said his name it did not make his heart stutter. He sat still until he saw her disappear around the curve of the lane, needing to see her for as long as possible. Only when the lane was deserted did he say the words which had almost tripped out of his mouth in her presence. ‘Until tomorrow, Freckles. I shall count the hours.’
* * *
Cassie could not remember ever spending a pleasanter afternoon in her life. Aside from the shameless behaviour of their two horses, she and Jamie had whiled away the better part of two hours simply talking and working. For once, she had not felt even slightly ridiculous or odd because she was convinced his mind saw exactly what hers did. When she thought up her silly stories, she could see them unfold in her head like a play, hear the conversations and the noises in the scene and be transported away to that place. Jamie’s paintings were exactly as she imagined that place to be. Whimsical. Childlike. Utterly charming. It was such a shame they would not be able to publish them because she was becoming increasingly convinced they were creating an excellent children’s book while they sat companionably on the riverbank.
She dried the last dish and went to sit dutifully at the table where her father was scratching away on his sermon, the quill moving frantically as he scribbled whatever fevered prose were currently occupying his thoughts. A quick glance at the paper and she saw the word Warriner written over and over, and her stomach sank. He was still on his misguided quest for revenge. Even though Jamie had told her he was ambivalent, her father’s intentions still bothered her. It did not sit right to stand by and watch them wronged. He saw her interest.
‘With each new day I learn of new horrors from that family. I now know the father pushed the mother to suicide and no doubt his spawn helped, too. She threw herself into the river rather than spend another day in hell.’
Poor Jamie. To lose a parent in that way could not have been easy, especially as he had made it plain his relationship with his father was fraught. ‘What a tragedy for the children, to be forced to grow up motherless.’ Something she could empathise with.
‘If only she had had the sense to drown her foul sons like unwanted puppies at the same time, then the world would be a better place!’
‘Surely you cannot mean that, Papa.’ Sometimes, his cruelty astounded her. ‘They were just children.’
‘Who have grown up to be replicas of their evil father! A man who was rarely seen in public sober. A man who shamelessly cheated my parishioners at any given opportunity. Refused to honour his debts. A man prone to violence! Already we have borne witness to the violence those boys are capable of. Did you not see the way I was assaulted by that man?’
It had hardly been an assault, more an assertion. Jamie had removed her odious father from his presence justifiably, nobly defending his brother. And he had offered to defend her whenever or wherever she needed him. Another nod to his innate sense of honour. How to explain such a thing to her father? Like a coward she decided not to. He would never understand. He took her silence as acquiescence.
‘They abducted an innocent woman for her fortune, Cassandra, lured her into their life of sin and now live off her like parasites.’
‘I have heard a different version of the tale, Papa, so I am inclined to think all is not as it seems. For every person who claims the Warriners abducted the woman, there is another who says they rescued her from her kidnappers and gave her sanctuary. I am told the Countess married the Earl because she loved him.’
‘Who are these liars you put such stock in?’ His voice had the calm, icy edge to it which she had learned to fear the most. ‘Tell me their names, Cassandra.’
‘We are new here, Papa. I do not know their names yet.’
‘And now you are protecting these sinners!’
‘No, Papa. Please believe me, I do not know their names yet, but they are good people.’ Jamie was good, she felt it in her bones and her heart.
Without warning, his arm shot out and he grabbed a hank of her hair in his fist and pulled it hard. ‘Liar!’
‘I am not lying, Papa. Please believe me!’ But Cassie knew it was already too late. One wrong word and his tenuous hold on his unpredictable temper was lost.
‘Your mother was a liar, too!’ He was already dragging her to the stairs, his palm now securely anchored in her hair. His strength, combined with her now powerless position, made fighting against him agony. Yet as she fought she also realised her pu
nishment was inevitable. He never backed down when he was like this.
Never.
Cassie forced her feet to move in the direction he wanted in the hope that he would at least acknowledge her lack of rebellion at her impending imprisonment. Such behaviour might lessen her sentence. Panicked tears gathered in her eyes as fear coursed through her body. How she reacted now would determine the length of her penance.
‘I am sorry, Papa. I was wrong. I should never have doubted you...’
‘Oh, Lord! Help her to see the error of her ways.’ They were at the foot of the stairs. The tears were already streaming down her face as the familiar, paralysing terror began to stiffen her limbs and quicken her heartbeat.
‘I’m so sorry, Papa.’
‘Cleanse her of the wantonness of her mother. Teach her to be meek and to obey your commandments...’ Cassie’s scalp burned where his fist pulled, his knuckles and fingernails digging painfully into her skull as she climbed each step cowed behind him, powerless to stand straight. ‘Teach her to honour and obey her father!’ She tried to placate him even though she knew it was futile. It was always futile. He was already lost in the scriptures and talking to the heavens.
‘“For the sons of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, until all the nation who came out of Egypt perished, because they did not listen to the voice of the Lord...”’
When they arrived at her bedchamber, he threw her to the floor as if she were something fetid and rancid he desired to be well rid of, still chanting manically and slammed the heavy door behind her. As the silent sobs racked through her body and she heard the key turn ominously in the lock once again, Cassie curled her arms around her knees and tried to take her mind to a happier place.
A place where horses talked and handsome pirates came to save her.
Chapter Eight
She didn’t come. For two days Jamie had sat miserably on the riverbank waiting like a lovesick puppy and for two days he had gone home with his metaphorical tail firmly between his legs. A churning, angry disappointment whirled in his gut as he sat in the drawing room early on Sunday morning.
What a blasted fool he was. He knew better than to build his hopes up when he had known he would ultimately be disappointed. He had confused her interest in his artistic talents as something more, which he knew was unlikely in the extreme and completely impossible given his circumstances, yet he had still convinced himself there might miraculously be something else going on.
The affinity he had thought they had shared, the strange sense of oneness which had overwhelmed him whenever they were together, was clearly one-sided. Why, she hadn’t even felt the urge to send word she wasn’t coming, almost as if he were of no consequence at all, and that galled. Had she forgotten they had arranged to meet again? Was he so instantly forgettable now that he was no longer a full man?
Wallpaper.
Something one noticed if it was right in front of your face, but forgotten when a more interesting diversion presented itself. He did not want to think about the interesting diversion she had been distracted by. There were plenty of fine young bucks in Retford, any one of them could have tried to turn her pretty freckled head. The surge of jealousy at the prospect came like a bolt out of the blue, rousing his temper at the imagined diverter and his own, physical limitations. He was not the sort of man to turn a young girl’s head any longer. It was all so blasted unfair!
But then they had shared a special moment when they last met. He was sure of that. His instincts told him there had been. A perfect moment where their eyes had locked and words were not necessary because it was just them and everything else had become insignificant.
Jamie groaned at his romanticised interpretation of what might have been, for her at least, an awkward moment. The impromptu noise caused his younger brother Joe, home from medical school for a short visit, to regard him curiously.
‘Is there a particular reason why you keep sighing and moaning?’
Jamie felt himself frown as he turned back to his painting and tried to concentrate on adding the detail to one of the carrots in the bridal arch he was painting. ‘My leg aches.’ Symptoms of any sort always distracted Joe.
‘Are you using the liniment I mixed for you?’
‘Yes.’ He wasn’t.
‘Then why is the bottle still full on your nightstand?’
‘Why are you poking around my bedchamber?’ Not that Joe, or any of his brothers, would comment on the ready arsenal of weapons placed strategically about the room and tucked under his mattress. They knew he would not discuss those things even though he was heartily ashamed they were still there. ‘Stay out of my room.’
‘Then take your medicine, you stubborn fool, and I would.’
Jamie grunted and pretended to work, effectively ending the conversation. Or so he thought.
‘Letty tells me you’ve met a young lady. A pretty girl, by all accounts. She says the pair of you have spent a great deal of time together—cosied up by the river.’
‘Hardly.’ This needed to be nipped in the bud before he became the main topic of conversation around the dinner table later. ‘She is the daughter of the very reverend we are being forced to see this morning. The one intent on vilifying us from the pulpit with his sermon.’ A sermon Jamie was annoyingly looking forward to in the hope he might catch the eye of Cassie and remind her he still existed, and hopefully satisfy himself that there were no young, limp-free bucks on the horizon.
‘We, of all people, cannot judge her by her father, Jamie. Letty says the pair of you are working on a children’s book together. Based on your eventful first meeting.’ One glance at his brother’s amused face told him that he and his meddling sister-in-law had been doing a great deal of speculating about the silent assassin and the vicar’s daughter.
‘No, we are not. I merely did a couple of illustrations for her as a favour.’ But Joe was already rising from his seat and walking knowingly towards him, obviously eager to catch him in the middle of another ‘favour’. The most whimsical, romantic and damning ‘favour’ of all of the ones he had created thus far. He quashed the urge to cover his easel with his arms to hide it from his brother’s view, but knew he would be sentenced ‘guilty as charged’ if he did and ribbed mercilessly. Better to brazen it out.
Joe stood at his shoulder and peered at the painting, grinned and then fished in his pocket for his spectacles before bending at the waist to scrutinise it further.
‘Are those horses getting married?’
‘Miss Reeves has an odd perspective of the world.’ One that matched his.
‘Is that Satan?’
Jamie gave one curt nod and dipped his brush in the orange paint.
‘And the other pony, the pretty one, does that belong to your vicar’s daughter?’ She was not his vicar’s daughter. Never would be his vicar’s daughter.
‘Yes. That is Orange Blossom.’
His brother’s index finger pointed at the pretty bridesmaid, her coppery hair festooned with pink flowers which exactly matched the ones Jamie had seen on her blasted garter. ‘And this must be Miss Reeves. She does look pretty. I can understand what you see in her.’
He ignored that comment to focus on painting the carrot. Miss Freckles was beautiful, not pretty. Heart-wrenchingly beautiful, sweet and funny.
‘Why are you sporting an earring?’
Jamie did not have to look at Joe to see he was grinning from ear to ear. ‘He’s not really me. Cassie calls him Captain Galahad. He’s a pirate. Apparently.’
‘Cassie? Hmm. First-name terms. Very familiar first-name terms.’
The anger was swift and irrational. ‘Stop it, Joe! Don’t try to make something out of that which is plainly not there. Miss Reeves asked me to do some illustrations. That is all. There is nothing else between us.’
‘If you say
so. But you have been meeting down by the river every day. All alone.’
‘No, we haven’t! I met her twice. I have not seen her since Thursday. Clearly she has had better things to do than entertain a cripple on her afternoons off.’ Jamie instantly regretted the words as soon as they spewed from his mouth. They said too much about how he was truly feeling. He experienced the overwhelming urge to punch his well-meaning brother in the face at the sight of the pity which suddenly suffused his expression.
‘I doubt she cares...’
Jamie threw down his brush. ‘Don’t say it, Joe! Don’t offer me platitudes or blasted pity. It is not welcome.’ He stood up and limped towards the window, staring out sightlessly on to the garden and tempering his voice lest this awkward exchange continue any longer. ‘I’d have thought the carriage would be here by now, seeing as Letty is quite determined to sit in the front pews.’
There was a beat of silence before his brother decided to retreat from the treacherous path the conversation was leading to. ‘I will go and check.’
He heard Joe leave the room quietly—only then did he allow his forehead to rest listlessly on the glass. When he saw her this morning he would need to appear unaffected by her rejection and impervious to whatever her awful father said. He would not stare at her, try to catch her eye or give any indication that he had desperately missed her these last few days. As always, his true feelings would remain hidden deep inside where nobody could see them and he would endure the pain silently. If only his brother could mix a liniment for his aching heart.
* * *
The Norman church was already half-full by the time the Warriner carriage pulled up in front of it. They made their way slowly towards their rarely used seats at the front, Letty stopping to chat to the one or two people who were beginning to warm to her and ignoring the way a great majority of the congregation felt the urge to whisper speculative asides to one another. Thanks to his years in the army, Jamie had been spared this usual reaction by the locals, therefore it irritated him perhaps more than it did the others. Few people even acknowledged them, which was beyond insulting when Retford had always been their home, yet the infamy of his father and grandfather before him had been so well deserved Jamie understood it even if he did not approve. But his father had been mouldering in the ground for eight years, during which time not a single Warriner had put a foot out of place, so he wished people would simply move on.
A Warriner to Rescue Her Page 10