“I’d love to,” Gillie said at once. “Only I wish you’d call me, Gillie.”
“Then I am Kate. We can spend a comfortable afternoon together traducing our menfolk.”
“Here,” Bernard said in alarm which made Gillie laugh.
Shortly afterward, they were then joined by an elderly lady Kate vaguely remembered, apparently Gillie and Bernard’s Aunt Margaret. Everyone spoke up when they addressed her, so presumably she was somewhat deaf.
The conversation was unexpectedly easy and lively until dinner was announced and a maidservant came and took the still sleeping baby away.
Kate found herself seated next to Wickenden, who, as he took his place, murmured, “I’m sorry about all your troubles, Kate. I didn’t hear anything about it until I got Julia’s letter just before we left Wickenden. Is there anything I can do?”
“Why, no, I’m brazening it out as usual. In fact, if I wasn’t on my best behavior, I’d propose a toast to your marriage and my freedom.”
“Well, I’ll drink to both of these, but I know you’ve been treated unfairly.”
“I’ve course I haven’t,” she said lightly. “I just got caught.”
“And Vernon? Is anyone shunning him?”
“Of course not. He’s a man. No one ever shunned you, either.”
Wickenden frowned. “Are you likening me to Lord Vernon?”
“Lord no, you were only ever a rake, not a rat.” Belatedly remembering Vernon’s relationship to Grant, she cast a quick glance across the table to where he sat between Mrs. Muir and Gillie. He appeared to be engrossed in his own conversation.
The dinner was informal, but surprisingly tasty, and the wine was excellent, a fact Wickenden complemented Bernard upon.
“Bernard has two virtues,” Wickenden teased. “His palate and his skill at cards.”
Bernard snorted.
Mr. Grant said innocently, “Are they not vices?”
“You’re the expert,” Kate murmured and won a laugh from everyone.
“I see you have the measure of our new vicar,” Wickenden said, amused.
“Curate,” Grant corrected, meeting Kate’s gaze humorously.
Gillie’s eyebrows rose but before she could ask the questions she clearly intended, a fierce knocking at the front door almost shook the dining room, causing everyone to glance around for possible enlightenment.
“What on earth—” Mrs. Muir began, when both male and female voices could be heard in furious argument.
The dining room door was flung open and the footman all but fell in, saying urgently, “Madam, the soldiers are here!”
“Whatever for?” Gillie demanded.
“Mr. Grant,” the footman replied.
Grant laid down his napkin as the footman was thrust ruthlessly aside by a young officer who’d been at the harbor the other day to receive the French prisoners.
“Forgive the intrusion,” he blustered as Mrs. Muir jumped to her feet in alarm. She had her knife still grasped in one hand, which may have been why he didn’t immediately see his quarry. “We seek Mr. Grant.”
Kate’s heart seemed to leap into her throat. She was afraid she knew exactly why the soldiers sought Grant.
“Grant?” Bernard exclaimed at the other end of the table. “What the devil for?”
However, Grant looked remarkably calm as he rose to his feet. “You’ve found him, clearly. How can I help you, Lieutenant?”
“Your presence is requested, sir,” the lieutenant said stiffly, “to answer questions about the escape of the French prisoner on Saturday.”
Kate’s blood ran cold. Of course, someone else must have seen…
Grant blinked at the lieutenant. “You barged into Mrs. Muir’s home to ask me this now? If your questions are so urgent, why on earth didn’t you ask me them on Saturday? Or at any point before this evening? And if they’re not urgent, then, frankly, tomorrow would be more acceptable.”
“I saw the prisoner escape, too,” Kate drawled.
“Oh, so did I,” Aunt Margaret agreed. “Shocking thing. Have you found him at last? I hope he hasn’t been saying anything untoward about Mr. Grant—you do know he is a clergyman? The curate of St. Andrews?”
“Yes, ma’am, we know exactly who he is. And yes, sir, it has to be tonight,” the lieutenant said firmly, despite the flustered flush mounting to his cheeks.
“You do know also,” Wickenden said, flicking a no doubt imaginary speck of dust from his sleeve, “that when Mr. Grant was your age, he was the veteran of several battles and had been honored by Lord Wellington himself? In our day, we didn’t harass our own people, did we, Grant?”
“Not that I recall,” Grant said with a shrug. “However, I think it would be best if I left you to your dinner and accompanied the lieutenant to clear this up. Mrs. Muir, ladies, I can only apologize for the disruption.”
With a bow to Mrs. Muir and each of the other ladies present, he strolled across to the room to the lieutenant, murmuring audibly, “An apology would be in order from you, too.”
Flushing redder, the lieutenant muttered, “Forgive the interruption,” followed by something about duty and orders, none of which Kate heard properly because Grant had glanced back over his shoulder, deliberately locking his gaze to hers.
She read desperate anxiety there, and a plea, and she understood it at once. Although there was no need for him to ask. She closed her eyes for the briefest instant to set his mind at rest, and then he walked out of the room in front of the lieutenant.
“Well!” Aunt Margaret exclaimed.
“Of all the insolence,” Mrs. Muir said in outrage. “Who is that man? Lord Wickenden, you will do me the favor of having him dismissed!”
“I would if I could, ma’am. Kate, do you know what this is about?”
Kate shook her head in instinctive denial. This was not her secret to reveal. Gillie had jumped up and sped to the window, so Kate took the opportunity to follow her.
Since the dining room looked onto the street, she saw the soldiers emerge from the garden path, with the taller figure of Grant in their midst. Beside him, the lieutenant still looked mortified by his task, if determined to do his duty. A plain black carriage and four horses, with a soldier at the lead horse’s head, stood just beyond the gate.
Grant seemed cool and detached, if anything, impatient to get the matter over with, but the soldiers stood around him, listening to the lieutenant’s long-winded orders. He seemed to be directing two of the soldiers to the back step of the carriage and one onto the box with the driver. Grant appeared to be ignoring them. His attention was fixed on something or someone out of Kate’s line of vision.
Without warning, while the lieutenant was still issuing unnecessary commands to his little troop, Grant bolted past them and the carriage in the direction of the horses’ heads. A shout went up. One of the soldiers, then the others, started after him. Grant eluded a flying tackle by leaping upward and landing on the nearest horse’s back.
“Ya!” he cried, through the horse’s protest, kicking his heels, and slapping the animal’s rump. The stunned soldier at its head was sent sprawling in the gutter as the horse threw up its head and tried to rear. One of the soldiers actually grabbed at the harness, but it was ripped from his grasp as horses, carriage, and Grant flew around the crescent in a flurry of whinnying, rumbling wheels, and galloping hooves.
Chapter Eight
For Grant, the matter had been annoying but hardly urgent. From the lieutenant’s answers, he gathered Cornelius had not yet been found, so Grant’s best plan was clearly to talk to the authorities and set their minds at rest. While Kate would, hopefully, send word to warn Cornelius to lie low. In fact, just as soon as he was strong enough, Cornelius should go home to their father. Loathe as Grant was to admit it, in this matter, Lord Boulton was Cornelius’s best protection.
Providing the vindictive old bastard didn’t disown him.
Those were his thoughts as he left the house, right up until he waited, kicking his heels
, for the lieutenant to arrange the disposal of his men, which they could have quite easily worked out for themselves. But the debate gave him time to look around. Without those moments, he’d never have seen the figure lurking beyond the horse’s heads, leaning against a garden gate and watching proceedings with interest. It was a disreputable figure to be hanging around a quiet, residential crescent, a grubby individual with dank hair hanging down from a hat pulled too far down over his face.
But even as Grant watched him, the man lifted his head, poked his hat further up with one finger, and grinned with blatant triumph. One of the men who’d attacked Kate. His heart surged in sudden fear and understanding. Somehow the man had discovered Cornelius and sent the soldiers after Grant. Not simply for revenge, surely, but to get him out of the way.
Kate. Oh, dear God, Kate!
He couldn’t shout a warning to her, couldn’t bolt back into the house and explain before the soldiers hauled him off again. As quick as thought, he darted past the pointlessly arguing soldiers and leapt on the horse’s back, yelling and slapping to make them bolt, and they did.
Clinging on with his knees, he grasped the horse’s mane as they thundered around the crescent, guiding them as best he could. Two ladies out for an evening stroll pressed themselves back into a garden hedge gawping at him as he hurtled by. God knew what they made of the soldiers in pursuit. Sadly, the curate’s reputation was about to move beyond the merely eccentric.
Some of the soldiers had run back along the crescent to cut him off as he emerged from the other end of it, but he charged through the middle of them, swerving around the corner toward coast road. Behind him, the carriage swayed and bumped, as if it was on two wheels and about to fall over, but he couldn’t have slowed the horses if he tried.
The town rushed past him at full tilt, people and dogs scattering out of his way. One elderly gentleman waved his stick at him. Stray dogs and lap dogs on leads united in barking at him. It was a fine cacophony of chaos, and in spite of everything, Grant began to laugh.
*
Kate rushed out of the house with Gillie, Bernard, and Wickenden in time to see the carriage charge between the pursuing soldiers and career around the corner on two wheels.
Wickenden began to laugh. “Damned if I know what he’s up to, but I’d have been sorry if he’d changed!”
“You mean this is normal behavior for our curate?” Bernard asked, apparently impressed. “Think I might cultivate the fellow. Certainly, he’s nothing like old Hoag.”
“What changed his mind?” Kate murmured, frowning. Ahead, two small boys were standing at the corner and pointing after the bolting carriage. “I could have sworn he meant to go with them quietly.”
Wickenden glanced at her. “Come, let’s go back. There’s nothing more to see. Kate, is Grant in serious trouble of some kind?”
Kate shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Not really. But someone else could be. He’s looking out for him. I think.” She frowned. Surely that had been taken care of with his silent request? He knew she would warn Cornelius, and she meant to. Though she could hardly go charging around to the vicarage right now, with the soldiers hanging around this house and no doubt watching the vicarage, too.
Since they reentered the house at that point, Wickenden asked no more.
Kate refused to stay late, insisting the family must want time free of guests. Bernard at once leapt up to escort her, and for once, Kate didn’t have her set-down ready to prevent him. Her mind was already torn between keeping up civil conversation and anxiety about Grant.
Unexpectedly, Gillie said, “No, David and I will walk with you. We were going for a walk in any case.” As if she understood how and why Kate might not want her brother’s escort.
So, while Wickenden was dispatched for Gillie’s pelisse and bonnet, Kate made her thanks and farewells to Mrs. and Miss Muir, then walked out into the hall with Gillie, anxious to be gone.
Gillie lowered her voice. “Does Bernard bother you?”
“It’s a passing phase,” Kate said dismissively. “He thinks I’m exotic and wise, God help him. But if he’s serious about the young Smallwood girl, he shouldn’t neglect her. Her mother wants to sell her young to the highest bidder.”
“I know. She even tried to snare David for her …but that’s a long story,” Gillie said hastily. “Jenny was swithering between Bernard and Kit Grantham the last time I saw her, but I suppose now that Kit’s gone back to the Peninsula, she only has Bernard to save her! If you ask me, they’re both far too young for marriage.”
“The trouble is, no one will ask you,” Kate observed. “Or Jenny.”
Gillie threw her a too-perceptive glance, and Kate remembered the other reason she’d chosen to accept the dinner invitation. She had to do it quickly before Wickenden joined them.
“I’m not here to cause trouble,” she said abruptly.
Gillie blinked. “I didn’t suppose you were.”
“Didn’t you?” Kate said with a faint twist of her lip. “It must have crossed your mind when I chose this place of all others to escape from my latest scandal.”
Gillie’s eyes fell. “I thought you might have needed a friend.”
“Perhaps I did. I had a fond memory of Blackhaven and it had, besides, the added advantage of not being suggested by either my father or my late husband’s family. I am, you must know, a perverse creature. But I wander from the point.” She drew a deep breath. “Which is that I have no designs upon your husband. And if I did, he would not look at me. Our day, such as it was, past many years ago.”
Gillie’s eyes flew back to Kate, widening in surprise.
Kate gave her a sardonic smile. “I saw how you looked at me when I stayed at the castle. But you never had anything to fear.”
Gillie was an open creature. Clearly she wanted to believe Kate, and yet there was a hint of skepticism in the twitch of her eyebrow.
“Didn’t I?” Gillie asked lightly, echoing Kate’s earlier words.
Kate shook her head. “I’ll not deny that I went to Braithwaite Castle in the belief that Wickenden and I could make each other happy by being lovers at last. I even suggested it, if you want the truth, but he was already too deeply in love with you.”
Gillie flushed at this revelation, but held Kate’s gaze. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I value his friendship,” Kate said frankly. “And yours.”
Gillie’s eyes widened further, but perhaps fortunately, Wickenden came bounding downstairs with his hat and his wife’s bonnet and pelisse, putting an end to further confidences of this nature.
Clearly, she’d given Gillie food for thought for the younger woman was unusually quiet as they walked around the crescent toward High Street. It was possible Kate had shot herself in the foot, metaphorically speaking, with her openness, which would be a pity considering what it had cost her to say the words. But she had too many other things on her mind to worry about that right now. She’d used a spare moment to try and do the right thing, but her chief focus was on Tristram Grant and Cornelius.
“Enough, Kate,” Wickenden said at last. “What is going on? What is Tris Grant’s connection to this escaped French prisoner?”
“He isn’t French,” Kate blurted. “He’s English but couldn’t admit it in front of his fellow prisoners for his own safety.” She glanced around to be sure there was no one else within hearing distance and lowered her voice even further. “Tris—Mr. Grant—hid him at the vicarage. I need to warn him and get him away, somehow, which is difficult when he’s injured, but hopefully the soldiers will be so busy chasing Tris that they won’t notice Cornelius being driven off in the opposite direction.”
To her annoyance, Gillie and Wickenden looked at each other. Kate supposed they were comparing silent notes on her levels of gullibility, until Gillie released her husband’s arm and slipped around to Kate’s other side.
“It so happens,” Gillie murmured, “that we can hide him until he’s well enough.”
“And Tris, too, until we can sort this mess out,” Wickenden added. His eyes gleamed. “Bring them to Blackhaven Cove after dark.”
Kate stared at him. “There’s no hiding place there!”
“Au contraire,” Wickenden said distractedly. He turned suddenly, looking behind him. “Do you know, I believe someone is following us.”
“Following me,” Kate corrected. “I don’t believe the new Baron Crowmore trusts me.”
“What, does he think you’re going to run off with the family silver?”
“Or that I’ll produce the family an alternative heir.”
Wickenden’s gaze returned to her. “Is that likely?”
“He doesn’t know. But he really doesn’t want me palming off Vernon’s bastard as Crowmore’s son to displace him.”
Gillie wrinkled her nose in distaste. “What horrid people they must be.”
“There I have to agree with you,” Kate replied. “Though, of course, I am prejudiced and no angel besides. Look, there’s another, lounging by the coffee house. The town is full of his people.” All waiting their moment to attack her, although she’d never involve Wickenden and Gillie by telling them so.
“Perhaps,” Gillie said doubtfully. “But I’m sure he at least is not working for Crowmore. He was in my father’s troop and would never spy for a civilian.”
As if bearing her out, the burly man by the coffee shop, grinned and doffed his hat. “Evening, Miss Gillie!”
“Well,” Kate murmured, faintly amused. “You are clearly worth cultivating! So … midnight?” she suggested. “Supposing I can find them.”
“Why don’t you let me find them?” Wickenden suggested. “I don’t want you running into trouble.”
“I won’t. We shall both look and hope one of us turns up with them!”
*
Gillie and Wickenden returned home via the vicarage, which was in darkness with no obvious signs of observers, and the harbor, which was quiet and peaceful enough to cause them to pause by the rail, overlooking the bobbing boats tied up there and the sea beyond.
Wickenden said idly, “No sign of any soldiers in the town. They must have all returned to barracks.”
The Wicked Lady (Blackhaven Brides Book 2) Page 10