The Captain and His Innocent

by Lucy Ashford

  She drew a deep, despairing breath. The answer to that was easy. Bircham Hall, Miss Pringle had frequently pointed out, was the largest and most prestigious house in this part of Kent. The staff would all have been warned of Ellie’s arrival and they would doubtless have spread the news around the neighbourhood.

  That was how he knew. And he’d been watching for the coach, guessing it would have to stop there; hoping for a chance perhaps to rob its occupants. She’d provided him with the perfect opportunity, by wandering away down the road.

  A common thief. That was the obvious answer. And yet she had a feeling that his intentions were somehow far, far more dangerous than that.

  She could see Miss Pringle now, standing outside the carriage, visibly fretting. She let out an exclamation when she saw Ellie. ‘There you are. I’ve been imagining all sorts of terrible things...’

  ‘I’m all right, Miss Pringle,’ Ellie soothed her. ‘Really I am.’

  Just at that moment a groom came up to inform them that the carriage was ready to set off again. And for the remainder of their journey to Bircham Hall, Ellie closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep.

  But she couldn’t erase the image of the man with the maimed right hand and the dangerous blue eyes. Something strange and unfamiliar tingled through her body. Fear? No—she’d known fear often enough, and fear didn’t make your pulse race at the memory of a man’s face, of his dangerous smile. Fear didn’t make you notice a man’s thick dark lashes. Didn’t make you remember the magical curve of his lips when he smiled and make you wonder how many women he had kissed.

  She would be safe at Bircham Hall, she told herself. She would have no friends, but she would be safe. And the man was surely nothing but a lowly ruffian.

  Then she shivered. Because she was remembering that the stranger in the long, patched coat had spoken not like a ruffian, but like an English gentleman—and his voice had melted her insides, even though every word he spoke was either a veiled insult or a threat.

  Sharp waves of panic were clawing at her throat. She’d thought she would be out of danger, when she reached England’s shores—but clearly, she could not have been more wrong.

  Chapter Three

  The dusk always fell swiftly along this part of the coast, blurring the lonely expanse of gorse-topped cliff and the miles of shingle beach. There were still ghostly reminders of the now-ended war with France, for in the distance was a rugged Martello tower, built in case of a Napoleonic invasion, and sometimes soldiers rode out from Folkestone to patrol the coast; though they were more likely nowadays to be hunting for smugglers rather than invaders.

  Just enough light lingered for Luke to see that both headland and beach were deserted, though he could hear gulls crying out above the waves. Still on foot, he had left the woods and the road well behind him now, taking instead the ancient paths used by local fishermen and farmers until he came at last to a rough track that led to a solitary house looming up from behind a thicket of wind-stunted sycamores.

  The house was said to have been built on the site of an ancient long-vanished fortress, constructed over a thousand years ago to protect this coastland from Germanic invaders. Now wreaths of mist shrouded it, whispering of past lives and of ancient battles. The locals said it was haunted; said that the fields which surrounded it, blasted by winter winds, were good only for the most meagre of crops and the hardiest of sheep. But Luke loved this landscape with a passion that was ingrained in his very being.

  He loved the winters, when frost and snow shrouded the bare countryside, and howling winds blew in from the sea; winds so cold they might have come straight from the freezing plains of Russia. He loved the summers, when the fields were filled with grazing sheep and lambs, and birdsong filled the nearby marshlands from dawn till dusk.

  His brother, Anthony—two years younger than he—had loved it all, too.

  Anyone seeing the house from a distance would think it derelict, but the locals would tell a passing stranger that it was the residence of Luke Danbury, a spendthrift and a wastrel who had once been a captain in the army in Spain, but who had now mortgaged his family estates to the hilt and was anyway absent for much of the time, doing God knew what.

  Making madcap, mysterious sea voyages, he’d heard people say. Up to no good. Away as often as he was here. Gambling, probably, and women, they muttered knowingly. Once he was engaged to an heiress—and didn’t she have a lucky escape! He’s let all his farmland, once so prosperous before the war, go to waste. And his missing brother’s a disgrace as well. The family name is ruined...

  The track led up to the front gate of the house, which stood permanently open. Indeed, such was the tangle of undergrowth—old, half-wild shrubs and ivy growing all around—that Luke doubted it could ever be shut. The house itself looked uninhabited; no lights shone from any of the front windows, and wreaths of sea fog crept around the gables and turrets. But Luke pushed his way through the wreck of a garden and past the twisted sycamores, towards the courtyard and stables round the back—and there, glowing lantern light welcomed him.

  There, the cobbles were well swept, with stacks of logs for burning, and bales of hay for the horses, all neatly piled under shelter. Several farms belonged to the estate, and the equipment for the usual winter jobs had been gathered there also for his tenants to collect: tools for fencing and ditching work, shovels and pickaxes.

  He noted it all automatically; yes, this what he had to concentrate on now. Saving the estate. Saving the livelihoods of the men, and their families, who depended on him. But all the time, he was thinking, too, that the rumours were true—that Lord Franklin Grayfield had returned from abroad with a French girl. An orphan, they said, and a distant relative, whom Lord Franklin had taken into his care.

  But Lord Franklin, as far as Luke knew, was not a man given to sudden, sentimental gestures of generosity. So why go to the trouble of bringing this girl—this relative—back to London? And why did Lord Franklin almost immediately decide to banish the girl to the Kent countryside?

  Of course, there would be gossip aplenty for Luke to listen to and sift through for himself, in the taverns of Bircham Staithe harbour, or in the larger ale houses of Folkestone a few miles away. There always was gossip about a rich, clever and ultimately mysterious man like Lord Franklin. There was already gossip about this girl, too—Luke had heard from people who’d glimpsed her in London that her name was Elise Duchamp and that she was pretty, in a French sort of way. But they hadn’t told him that she went around carrying a pistol in her pocket and quite clearly knew how to use it. No one had mentioned that.

  And as for ‘pretty’—was that the way to describe her rich dark curls, her full mouth and slanting green eyes? Was it her mere prettiness that had sent a jolting kick of desire to his blood—and had urged him, with age-old male instinct, to draw her slender body close, so he could feel the feminine warmth of the curves he just knew would lie beneath that old, shapeless cloak?

  She was intriguing, in more ways than one. There was considerably more to her than met the eye. Take, for example, that compass.

  Luke Danbury let out a breath he hadn’t even realised he was holding. He was passing the stables now, mentally registering that the horses were secure for the night. A couple of them gently whickered as he paused to stroke their noses, murmur their names. A moment later he was opening the stout door that let him in to the back of the house, inhaling the familiar scents of stonework and smoke from the fires as he walked through the flagged hall to the low-beamed dining room at the very heart of the old building.

  The sound of cheerful voices told him before he even entered that Tom, the two Watterson brothers and Jacques had settled themselves extremely comfortably around the vast oak table, eating Mrs Bartlett’s hot beef stew and drinking some red French wine.

  Eagerly they welcomed Luke and pulled out a chair for him, while Mrs Bartle
tt, Tom’s wife, came hurrying from the adjoining kitchen to ladle out a dish of stew for him. Jacques poured Luke a glass of the wine.

  ‘What detained you, my friend?’ asked Jacques curiously. ‘We were beginning to think you might have gone into town, to find yourself a pretty girl.’

  Tom was blunter. ‘Did you find out if Lord Franklin was in the coach?’

  ‘He wasn’t.’ Luke drank half his wine and put his glass down. ‘Apparently he’s still in London.’

  ‘Then who were the girl and the old woman?’

  ‘The girl’s a relative of Lord Franklin’s. The other one’s her companion, I believe.’

  Tom nodded wisely. ‘Ah. The orphan he’s said to have taken into his care—which must have been a surprise to everyone, cold-blooded fish that he is. I heard rumours that she’s pretty. Is she?’

  ‘She certainly does her best not to be.’ No more. No need to say any more.

  ‘She’s French, they say,’ announced Josh Watterson eagerly. ‘That’s interesting.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Luke poured himself more wine and the others concentrated again on their food—all except for Jacques, who was watching him sharply.

  Monsieur Jacques, Luke’s men called him. He’d been a soldier, captured by the English and condemned to rot as a prisoner of war—until Luke freed him. ‘And I pay my dues,’ Jacques liked to explain to Luke’s companions. ‘I help my friends as they help me.’

  It was to pay back his debts that Jacques now ran his small sailing ship with skill and bravado between the coasts of France and England on dark and misty nights such as this. But Jacques was frowning in puzzlement as he pushed his empty plate aside and said, ‘Why, my friend Luke, would Lord Franklin suddenly discover a young French relative? Why didn’t he know of her before? Surely, wealthy families such as his have their ancestry well documented for generations back?’

  ‘That’s true.’ Luke paused in eating his meal. ‘Their family lines are guarded as thoroughly as their fortunes, to prevent interlopers from getting any of their money.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I thought. Has the girl taken his fancy, do you think?’

  Luke let out a bark of laughter at that. ‘Highly improbable. They say Lord Franklin hasn’t touched a woman since his wife died ten years ago—and he wasn’t overfond of her, by all accounts.’

  Jacques smiled. ‘So a liaison of some sort is out of the question. But why did he go to the trouble of bringing her to England? And why—having claimed her as his responsibility—would he banish her to Bircham Hall?’

  ‘When I have the answers, I’ll be glad to share them with you.’

  ‘Indeed,’ the Frenchman said. ‘So you’re going to make enquiries, are you? Should I perhaps begin to wonder if this French demoiselle of Lord Franklin’s is more interesting than you say?’

  Luke savoured his wine before putting the glass down. ‘Totally uninteresting,’ he said. ‘Too young and too proud, I imagine. Besides, I have more than enough to deal with at the moment.’

  ‘With your estate and your farms? I hope I sense optimism?’

  Just then Mrs Bartlett came bustling in to clear away the used dishes, and Tom and the Wattersons stated their intention of carrying out their usual evening tasks. Luke sat back in his chair and took his time answering Jacques’s question. ‘I’m not sure if it’s optimism, or foolishness. I’ve found some new tenants for the farms—but do you know how much the price of English grain has dropped in the last year? I’ll be keeping the men busy, it’s true, but it might all be for nothing.’

  ‘You’re not wishing you’d married your heiress?’

  ‘Hardly. That ended almost three years ago. She’s marrying someone else in spring—someone her father considers far more suitable—although my tenants might wish I had her money to throw around.’

  Jacques shook his head. ‘You’re giving them something better than money, Luke. You’re giving them hope, and you’ve got to remember that.’

  Luke looked around bleakly. ‘I’m postponing bankruptcy, that’s all. I must by now have sold off everything of value that’s ever belonged to my family.’

  ‘You can still fight for your family’s honour. Not with sword or pistol, it’s true—but you know as well as I there are other ways. I’m going back to France tomorrow—and if your brother’s still alive, I will find him, I swear.’

  Tom Bartlett came in, with more logs for the fire. ‘You’re talking about the captain’s brother?’ he said eagerly. ‘Who knows—he might even turn up here one day, right out of the blue. I can just see it, Captain Luke—he’ll ride up the track, bold as ever, and tell us all his adventures, just like he used to.’

  Jacques nodded approvingly. ‘That’s the spirit. Let’s raise our glasses to the captain’s brother. Let’s wish him a safe journey home!’

  ‘To Anthony,’ they echoed. ‘A safe return.’

  * * *

  Gradually, the fire died down. Midnight came and went; they talked of battles they’d fought and comrades they’d known until at last, knowing they must rise well before dawn, they went off to their beds.

  All of them except Luke.

  The big house was quiet enough now for him to hear the whisper of the wind in the trees outside and the faint hiss of the waves breaking on the long shingle beach below the cliffs. Somewhere in the distance a nightbird called.

  He went to stir the embers of the fire, lifting the metal poker with his maimed right hand by mistake. Fool. Fool. The heavy implement clattered on the hearth. He picked the poker up almost savagely with his left hand and jabbed at the logs until they roared into life.

  Damn it. He was of no use to anyone, least of all to himself. He ripped off the black leather glove and stared at the two stumps where his fingers had been. The scars had almost healed, and as for the ache of the missing joints—well, he was used to it.

  What he could not grow used to was the feeling that his younger brother—who’d relied on him, who’d trusted him—was lost for good. Was dead, like the others. By hoping that Anthony had somehow survived, he’d made the final blow ten times as bad for himself.

  Again and again during these last few months, he’d cursed his injured hand, because it had stopped him sailing to France with Jacques and hunting the coast for clues or answers. He couldn’t use a pistol, or a sword; wasn’t even much use at helping sail a ship. But perhaps Fate was telling him that he should turn his mind to other matters.

  Perhaps Fate was reminding him that the answers he was seeking could also lie here, in England, not in France at all. Perhaps Fate was telling him that here, he could find out what had really happened to Anthony and his brave comrades. Why they had been betrayed—and by whom. Even though such secrets were as closely guarded as rich men’s fortunes.

  He thought again of Lord Franklin Grayfield, a rich widower in his late forties; a remote, clever man who had a son out in India whom he hadn’t seen for years. Lord Franklin Grayfield, who cared far more for his art collection, it was said, than for female company.

  Yet he’d claimed an unknown French girl as his

  relative—the girl Luke had met that afternoon. Harshly, he dismissed his memory of the light lavender scent that emanated, ever so faintly, from her creamy skin. Harshly, he thrust aside his awareness of her downright vulnerability and the haunting sadness in her eyes. Instead, he told himself to remember the pistol she’d handled so deftly and so purposefully—as if in mockery of his own injury.

  Caroline used to squeal in girlish horror at any mention of the war and weapons. But the French girl had that dainty gun and looked as if she knew how to use it. What kind of life had she led, before coming to England? And if the pistol had startled him, what in God’s name was he to make of the compass she’d dropped?

  Once again Luke remembered the astonishing inscription that he’d seen engraved u
pon its side—he found that his heart was speeding at just the thought of it. He also remembered the look on her face as she’d snatched it from him. No wonder she was so eager—so very eager—to get it back.

  Who was she, really? And what in hell was she doing here, under Lord Franklin’s so-called protection?

  Chapter Four

  Ellie, too, was still awake, sitting alone by the window in the icy spaciousness of her bedroom in Bircham Hall. It was past midnight. But she couldn’t sleep, because this was a day she would never, ever be able to forget.

  After the repair to the road, Lord Franklin’s carriage had made swift progress, its driver no doubt eager to make up for the delay. They’d left the main road to pass through some gates by a well-lit lodge, after which they followed a long private drive; Ellie had seen how the carriage lamps picked out clumps of winter-bare trees set amidst grassy parkland.

  And as they crossed the bridge over a river, she had her first view of the Hall—stately and foursquare, with flambeaux burning on either side of the huge, pillared entrance, as if in defiance of the January night.

  Lord Franklin’s country residence. It was magnificent. It was haughty and forbidding. ‘Oh, look,’ cried Miss Pringle, who was peering out of the window, too. ‘Here we are at last, Elise. And I see—goodness me!—that all the staff are outside, waiting to greet you!’

  Indeed, Ellie had seen them all there in the cold: the maids in black and the footmen, straight as soldiers, clad in Lord Franklin’s livery of navy and gold.

  All waiting for her. Ellie’s heart sank.

  But Miss Pringle practically bubbled with excitement. ‘Such an honour for you!’ she murmured as the grooms hurried to hold the horses and lower the carriage steps. ‘Such a very great honour! And look—here is Mr Huffley, his lordship’s butler...’

  ‘Miss Pringle. Mademoiselle.’ The butler made a stiff bow to them as they descended from the carriage. ‘It is my pleasure, mademoiselle,’ he went on to Ellie, bowing again, ‘to welcome you most heartily to Bircham Hall. Allow me to present our housekeeper, Mrs Sheerham. Our cook, Mrs Bevington. The senior housemaid, Joan...’