It was still there: the government’s threat to fell Balesboro Wood! No matter how many times she’d read the letter, the words never came fully into focus.
The arable land created by such felling would produce more than 2-tonnes of wheat per hectare, making the felled timber available for hundreds of wartime uses, including in the manufacture of our combat aircraft.
Please be informed that a team of inspectors from the Timber Supply Department of the Forestry Commission will arrive at your farm the afternoon of Tuesday, next.
Tomorrow! Good grief. She hadn’t forgotten, just didn’t want to remember.
At the time of the visit, you, or your representative, will conduct a tour of your fields and forest with the inspectors, answer their questions and provide information as they require, including maps, crop and timber yields, financial records, water sources and any other detail that they might request.
Following the inspection, a determination will be made in writing as to the course of action to be taken regarding Balesboro Wood.
“Course of action?” A full-out assault against Balesboro Wood! A parkland as ancient as Somerset and just as mystical. Chock full of legends. Her favorite being that her own many times great grandfather Richard Devries had gotten lost in Balesboro Wood, found his way to the Hall and right into the heart of her as many times great-grandmother, Jacqueline. If the legends were true, the men who married the guardians of Nimway Hall had each tangled with Balesboro Wood and won the hearts of their ladies.
When she was a little girl, a traveling scholar once sought shelter in the Hall on a stormy summer night and told stories of an ancient hillfort that used to sit atop Windmill Hill. An outpost used by King Arthur and his knights, so he told them. The next day, before the man left, he led Josie and her two cousins to the ruins, barely visible beneath the moss and fern and tangled roots of the hornbeam, but Josie and the two boys spent the rest of the summer bringing the stories of Arthur and Merlin to life. And there was Isobel’s Bower, an enchanted grotto, where, even on the hottest days of summer, the air was cool enough for a breath to fog.
Three-quarters of the tomboy nicks and scars on her shins and knees, her elbows and hands came from Balesboro Wood. Even the jagged scar on her shoulder, just below the pale, spherical birthmark that Aunt Freddy used to whisper—in complete seriousness, was the Mark of Nimway—happened in the wood when she fell out of her favorite beech tree. Miraculously, she landed nearly unscathed on the mossy ground, because the beech had reached out to catch her–honest to God, the branch had moved, slowed her fall and saved her from a broken leg, or worse.
Balesboro Wood even had its own fragrance, different, sweeter, spicier, than anywhere in the world she’d ever traveled with her parents.
The war in Europe had been raging for a little more than a year now; it would probably rage on for more years to come; the Nazi’s might even invade and attempt to conquer Britain. But if Josie Stirling had anything to say about it, Balesboro Wood would still be standing long after the war was won or lost and the armies returned home to lick their wounds. Her own granddaughter would be able to walk in these same woods, smell the same fragrance, skin her knees and play Arthur and the Round Table.
Much as she wanted to wrap a magic ward around Nimway Hall against the timber inspectors—and a certain colonel encamped in her conservatory, she didn’t know how to cast a spell—didn’t believe there was such a thing in the world as magic.
But saving Balesboro Wood would have to wait for the morning. More pressing and far-reaching responsibilities awaited her tonight before her meeting.
She retrieved her favorite propelling pencil out of her desk drawer where she had stashed it before leaving for London, spent a few minutes logging the day’s activities and her observations into the farm journal. Made notes about tomorrow’s tasks and, most importantly, created a list of demands for her meeting tonight with the colonel.
Finished, she folded the list, tucked it into the front pocket of her dungarees, then checked her wristwatch. Ten minutes until ten. Just enough time, and quiet enough in the Hall to accomplish one final task before her encounter with the man who believed that his rank and requisition letter from the War Office gave him leave to order her around her own home.
He was about to discover that the Guardians of Nimway Hall were a force to be reckoned with.
Chapter 3
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us to the pub, sir?”
“Thank you, but not tonight, Crossley.” Gideon pointed to his in-basket. “I’ve enough paperwork to keep me busy–“
“—Until your meeting with Miss Stirling.” Crossley laughed from the doorway.
“In the library,” Easton added, slipping on his jacket.
“At half-ten,” Durbridge said, clapping his cap on his head.
“Yes. Thank you, gentlemen.” Gideon waved them on their way, then spent the next two hours sitting at his desk in the dim light provided by the single bulb of his lamp, his bad leg propped atop an overturned waste bin, preparing reports to his superiors, reading and responding to the many dispatches that seemed to arrive hourly from the War Office and the Special Operations Executive.
In addition to the deluge of paperwork and the business of siting and constructing a secret operational base, and recruiting and training the new Aux Unit, Gideon was expected to take command of the local Home Guard, undoubtedly a group of veterans from the Great War and lumbering farm lads who would resent him asserting his authority into their local company. But that was the nature of military protocol, at home or behind enemy lines. These Home Guard units needed the same training as the regular army, if they were to be effective in the event of an invasion.
The nationwide fear of invasion was as genuine as it was justified. In the few months since Gideon had been injured, he’d watched helplessly as the German army invaded Norway and Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France–the entire coastline of Europe in German hands, with only 26 miles of English Channel to protect her. By all accounts, the Blitz was an action meant to soften up England for a German invasion that could begin any day now.
Gideon had used his family’s influence and this very real threat to national security to insert himself back into the war effort, despite not being quite recovered.
Given the code name Invictus and sworn to secrecy, he was to establish contact through a dead drop with an intelligence agent in Somerset. Together they were to initiate a secret conduit of communication to link the Transatlantic cable office in Porthcurno, at the tip of Cornwall, directly to Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms in Whitehall. Should the country’s telegraph system be disrupted by aerial bombing or invasion, the Balesborough Link was to serve as the collection and distribution point for encoded messages that would save lives and help force the invading army back on its heels.
He’d learned the location of the dead drop just an hour before, when a message arrived from the SOE instructing him to approach the drop the next morning, but only if he recognized the signal indicating the drop had been made.
But that was for the morning. Tonight he was to meet with the singular Miss Josie Stirling, a confrontation he wasn’t looking forward to but was eager to begin. It wasn’t the outcome of their meeting that caused him concern—the requisition for billeting at Nimway Hall from the SOE was clearly documented and unbreakable, no matter how loud the woman’s objections. It was the battle itself that concerned him. Five minutes with the woman this afternoon, and she had become a fixture in his thoughts for the remainder of the day, and well into the evening.
Even now. Eyes bright and green as a new leaf, mind just as bright, as quick. The late afternoon sunlight glinting gold on her hair. Her mouth ripe and lush as a persimmon, pouting at him in her righteous anger. A woman fierce with a courage, unlike any woman of his acquaintance. A puzzle that needed solving before the night was much older.
With thirty minutes until the meeting, he locked his reports in the office safe,
retrieved his cane, turned out his desk lamp then negotiated the clutter of ghostly furniture in the great hall, entering the library with every intention of unwinding with a bit of reading.
The library was almost completely dark, its deep corners shadowed, but for the fire that flickered and flared in the fireplace against the interior east wall and a reading lamp sitting on the octagonal table between the pair of tall-backed chairs facing the fire. As impressive as the library in his family’s home at High Starrow, but more welcoming, a place of study and comfort.
Twenty minutes after ten. No sign of Miss Stirling. She’d said ten thirty, was the sort of woman who would walk into the library as the clock struck the time.
His fingers still cold from sitting too long at his desk in the glass and marble chill of the conservatory, he rested his cane against the drinks table near the door and went directly to the fire, extending his hands toward the marvelous heat. His palms had just begun to warm when he sensed a shift of movement behind him, then a voice—
“You must be my Josie’s colonel.”
Gideon made a painfully quick turn in the direction of the voice, was automatically reaching for his sidearm—which he realized too late was locked in the safe in his room, at the very same moment he located the speaker who was lounging in the chair to his right. A smiling, distinguished-looking gentleman, with a trimmed gray moustache and beard, a book open and braced on his crossed knee, a snifter of brandy and a bottle of calvados on a small silver serving tray on the table beside him.
Gideon settled his frayed nerves, gone stale and soft these many months of his recovery. “Lt. Colonel Gideon Fletcher. And you are?”
“Edward Stirling,” the man said as he laid his book on the reading table. He rose from the chair in a single sweep of graceful limbs and an easy smile, coming to rest eye-to-eye with Gideon and offering a strong hand. “Late of Stirling House, London. Newly arrived father to the lady of the Hall.”
“Edward Stirling? Of the theatrical family?” The connection was a surprise, but explained the daughter’s unabashed spirit. “The Stirling Theatre, Stirling Pictures?”
“The celebrated actress, Kitty Stirling. And you mustn’t leave out the Stirling Scandal Sheet or the arcades at Brighton and Blackpool—that would be our Stirlings. The family business. Entertaining the audiences of England, America and most of Europe since long before the time of Shakespeare. We Stirlings were mercers back in the days of the York Mystery plays, apparently took to theatricals with enterprising enthusiasm and great quantities of textiles, which costumed the new extravaganzas. This was long before my untold great-grandfather teamed up with Mr. Shakespeare and other rogues and vagabonds to form the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.”
Gideon found himself both in awe of the man, and relaxing considerably. “Sir, if you meant to impress me with your family tree, you have done so—”
“Edward, please.” Stirling gestured to the opposite chair. “And I only meant to put you at ease after I startled you. Please sit with me. Your reflexes are quick, Colonel. Had you been armed, I fear we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“I hope that’s not true.” Gideon laughed for the first time in days, gripped the upholstered leather arms and lowered himself into the supremely comfortable chair, relieving the pressure on his leg and back. “I do apologize, Edward. I thought I was alone.”
“And you thought you were armed, as well.” Stirling canted his head in a piercing study that many a man must have shrunk from in terror. “Career military from your bearing. Either that or an aristocratic upbringing.”
“Both, I’m afraid. Am I that transparent?” That out of shape, off my guard, he thought, but didn’t add.
“And engaged in the secret services, if I’m not mistaken.” When Gideon refused to bend to the man’s silent inquisition, Stirling continued with a smile, “I only know this, Colonel, because I was there in your place during the Great War. Counter-espionage for the Secret Service Bureau; what you modern chaps call MI6.”
Bloody hell! Edward Stirling, a counter-intelligence agent! Gideon hoped his surprise didn’t show in his face. But the man seemed amused that Gideon wasn’t offering a comment, let alone a confirmation, and continued the one-sided conversation.
“I note your surprise, Colonel. But what better training for an agent than a life spent in the theatre? I was fluent in German and French, had a bit of Russian, was well into my 30s when the war came along and was a familiar fixture on the European theatre circuits—a natural, or so ‘M’ said when he came to recruit me.”
William Melville, himself, the founder of the Bureau. More than impressed, Gideon only nodded, enjoying the man’s tale.
“You’re very good at your job, Colonel. I commend you.” Another smile, as though a sharp memory had lodged itself in the man’s mind. “I would sit here and regale you with my adventures, but, damn me, if my long ago missions aren’t still covered by the Official Secrets Act. Care to join me in a brandy while we wait on my daughter? Your secret is safe with me, by the way. She told me you were to meet her here and that I should be sure to absent myself. Which I shall, the moment she arrives.”
“Yes, thank you. I’d be delighted to join you, Edward.” On the advice of his family doctor Gideon hadn’t had a drop of alcohol in all the months of his recovery. Until now. Now he needed one.
“I warn you, Colonel—”
“Gideon, please.”
“As I was saying, Gideon, my daughter can be quite despotic when she wants something done her way.” Stirling handed him the snifter of dark amber. “Comes by it honestly, from a long line of tenacious women and imperious theatre directors who delighted in making grown men cry.”
“I shall keep that in mind.” Gideon cupped the bowl of the glass and leaned back against the chair.
“Good man!” The clock on the mantle chimed the half hour. Half-ten. “Interesting, though—” Stirling said, with a swirl of his glass, “Josie is punctual to a fault. Claims that keeping to a schedule is the only way she can manage Nimway Hall on her own.”
“An unusual role for a woman, don’t you find? Managing an estate the size and complexity of Nimway Hall.” He found himself curious as hell as to why and what placed her in the position.
“My Josie is an unusual woman, the mistress of an unusual estate. You’d best keep that in mind, too.” Stirling relaxed against the back of the chair. “Where do you call home, Gideon.”
“I’m a soldier, I live where I’m posted. But my family’s home is High Starrow, near Ramsgate.”
Stirling sat upright, eyes wide. “Indeed! Your father was Michael, Lord Starrow? I knew him, a thousand years ago. A Cambridge man, right? Bit of a knave?”
“My father?” A knave—not possible.
“Known far and wide as ‘Flash Hot Starrow, the Lord of Misrule.’ Could assemble a bacchanal with the drop of his hat.”
“You’re talking about Michael Tiberius Fletcher?” The most strict and stolid man he’d ever known. “Couldn’t be one and the same.”
“The very one! Oh, my boy, the stories I could tell you. I understand he has passed?”
“Three years ago.” Gideon whirled the brandy’s sweet fumes beneath his nose, trying and failing to picture his father as the Lord of Misrule, finally slipped the calvados onto his tongue, savored its shock of apple and fire. “My older brother, Joseph, assumed the title of viscount. He tries to run High Starrow, but complains endlessly about the RAF requisitioning more and more of the estate with every passing week of the war.”
“Just as your lot has requisitioned my daughter’s home—”
“Perhaps.” Gideon dismissed the notion out of hand. “My mother lives in the dower house. A formidable woman herself.”
“Excellent! Then you’ll have rehearsed dealing with a woman like my Josie. Speaking of which—” Stirling nodded toward the mantel clock “— it’s ten thirty-five. Something has delayed her. She won’t be happy with whatever, whomever has made her late.”
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As though the great Edward Stirling had delivered a cue to an actress waiting in the wings for her grand entrance, Josie Stirling appeared like a hurricane in the space between them and the fire, a wild, shapely silhouette against the dancing flames.
“Good Lord, Daughter, what’s happened to you?”
Gideon found himself standing, staring at the apparition in front of him as she stepped into the glow of the table lamp. The woman was drenched and muddied from her wellies to the top of her head. A leafy twig of willow was jutting from the hair above her right ear, her cheek streaked with dirt, lips full in her furor, deep red in her passion.
Even in the dim light of the table lamp her eyes flashed with a fire brighter than his memory, more golden than the flames in the hearth. Filling him with a longing so intense, it clenched his chest, a heat so fierce it lodged in his groin. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Ever.
“I fell,” she said, as though the act of her falling was impossible.
“In the hallway?” Stirling stood and peered closely at his daughter, brandy still in hand, a tick of humor in the corner of his eyes.
“On my way through Balesboro Wood, thank you for asking, Father.” She threaded her fingers through her hair, combed out the twig, gave it a scoffing scowl and tossed it into the hissing fire. “My own wood, which I know better than the back of my own hand.”
“What the devil were you doing trekking through the woods this time of night, Josie Bear? Were you alone?”
“And without a torch.” She glared at Gideon, as though he were somehow to blame, then dropped a pair of logs into the fire grate, stepping backward as billowing sparks dashed up the flue. “I do apologize for being late, Colonel Fletcher. It’s never happened before. It won’t happen again.”
Gideon couldn’t stop staring, words clamoring around inside his head. “Yes. Accepted, Miss Stirling. And understandable, given—”
The Legend of Nimway Hall Page 5