“Ask Mrs. Lamb for a poultice!” Josie shouted after the fleeing inspectors, trying not to laugh out loud—not at their pain, but at her momentary reprieve. “I’ll bring your satchels!”
Josie stood for a long moment, watching, chiding herself for not feeling bad for the pair.
“You’re a heartless woman, Josie Stirling.”
Josie whirled at the voice, knowing it was Fletcher before she found him standing at the edge of the dark woods. He was smiling like a cat who’d been spying on his dinner, just about to pounce.
“How long have you been watching, Colonel?” And why hadn’t she heard him approach? She usually heard everything that went on in the woods within a hundred feet around her, could sort the rilling of a stream from the rustle of a vole through leafy clutter.
“Long enough to feel sorry for those two.” He stepped out into a patch of sunlight. Standing there in the full glare of the sun, the man looked every inch the well-trained soldier. His shoulders broader than she remembered from the shadows of the night before, his muscles sharply defined beneath the lighter weight of his khaki cotton shirt, his forearms thickly corded where he had rolled up the sleeves. “Seems Mrs. Lamb was right to worry about those two.”
“Mrs. Lamb exaggerates. About everything.” Was forever trying to fix her up with a husband. “What did she say about the inspectors?”
“The ‘wicked timber people’? Quite a bit, actually, mostly nonsense about Balesboro Wood. And that I shouldn’t worry, because you wouldn’t let anything happen to them.”
“She doesn’t like the woods, believes the local legends.”
“So I gathered. I gave her a lift from the village. Couldn’t let her wheel that barrow of food up to the Hall while I drove past in the Austin.”
“Mrs. Lamb knows that she’s perfectly welcome to drive Bess into the village on market day to pick up the week’s groceries. But thank you, Colonel. She’s not as spry as she was when she first came on as a kitchen maid forty years ago. And how did you fare in Balesboro Wood?” He looked none the worse for wear; it must approve of the man. “Did you find a suitable site for your survey?”
“Site?” He frowned sharply as though he’d forgotten last night’s conversation, then nodded and scrubbed his fingers through his dark hair. “Ah, yes—I did. A perfect location, can see all the way across the Levels to the Bristol Channel.”
“Care to show me, Colonel?” There were only a few places that offered such a sweeping view. Best to know which and where so she could keep track of him. “Or is it an official secret?”
“What about your inspectors? Shouldn’t you at least check on them? They can’t be happy with their treatment in your woods.”
“Mrs. Lamb will dose them with feverfew, poultice their wounds and fill them up with one of her farmhouse lunches; they’ll sleep for two hours and awaken without a welt. At which point, I’ll return their satchels, hand them a copy of my harvest records, load them into their car and send them happily on their way.”
He raised a skeptical brow, as though she were spinning a tale just for him. “You’re serious?”
“It’s the way we take care of people who get in our way here at Nimway Hall.”
“Should I consider that a threat?”
“A simple fact, Colonel. Do with it what you will.”
Fletcher opened his mouth as though to speak, paused to shrug before he spoke. “All right then, Miss Stirling, I’ll show you the siting location and you can tell me if you know of a better place.”
“Anything to aid in the war effort.” She picked up the rucksack and satchel, slung them over one shoulder and started toward the woods.
But she’d misjudged the weight of the rucksack and it swung her off balance, knocking into the back of her knees. She would have fallen like a sack of turnips if Fletcher hadn’t caught her on the way down, countered all that momentum and pulled her against the hard length of him. His arms, his chest, his hips, his—
“Colonel!” His mouth was inches from hers, alive with that enigmatic humor of his.
“Perhaps these woods are magical, Miss Stirling.” His eyes were dancing as he held her, bright and blue as the sky.
The woods and the orb and this very intrusive man! Magical nonsense!
“I’ll thank you to restore me to my feet, Colonel.”
“If you think you can walk on your own without crashing to the ground?” He straightened with her, held out the rucksack.
“I’ll do my best.” Her cheeks ablaze with embarrassment and her pulse drumming against her ears, Josie retrieved the rucksack and ducked into the cool shadows of the understory. A dozen steps further she heard the nicker of a horse, saw familiar movement in a stand of trees. “You rode Cassie up here?”
“Isaac assured me that you wouldn’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all.” She truly didn’t. She smoothed her hands along Cassie’s cool neck, let the mare’s warm tongue lave the palm of her hand for its salt. “In fact, I appreciate you giving her an airing. I’ve been too busy since the war began for pleasure riding and my girl does love these woods.”
“She did seem to know her way around the trails and tracks.”
“We often log up here with our Shire horses.” She looped the straps of the rucksack and the satchel over the pommel. “Cassie tags along, doesn’t like to be left behind any more than Winnie does. Or me.”
“Where is Winnie today?”
“With the children. Their last day of freedom before school starts tomorrow.”
“Then come see the survey site if you insist, Miss Stirling,” he said, gathering Cassie’s reins beneath her bit. “I could use your opinion.”
“I’ve plenty of those, Colonel, on a variety of subjects. Lead on.”
While Gideon was still thrumming with the scent of her, the lady of Nimway Hall seemed to have quickly forgotten their brief encounter as she led him along the ridge of trees.
“I thought this might be where you meant, Colonel.” She cast her smile back at him then stepped lightly through a patch of brambles and ivy in her wellies. “We cleared this place for a skid two years ago, last time we thinned the Overlook. You can still see along here where we staged the logs after felling—” she stepped toward the drop-off and peered over the edge. “The gouges in the stone from the skid track are still there where we lowered the logs down the slope to the road level.”
Pleased that he’d scouted a suitable survey site for his cover story, Gideon looped Cassie’s reins over a branch and followed the woman, realizing that for all his hiking about for the past two hours, the expected ache in his knee hadn’t materialized. In its place was a persistent curiosity about the intriguing Josie Stirling.
He’d caught sight of her a half-hour ago, marching the hapless inspectors through the understory as though they had been enchanted by a sorceress, the Pied Piper leading the innocents into the mountain where they’d likely never have been seen again if the woman had had her wishes. He’d remained silent in his cover on the trail above, amused by her determination to save her woods from the ministerial marauders, grateful that Cassie hadn’t given them away.
Dressed in dungarees, a white cotton thermal top, a blue and green plaid shirt over that, a wide-brimmed hat topping her golden hair, and a pair of aviator sunglasses perched on her perfectly shaped nose, Josie Stirling was every inch the formidable castellan of Nimway Hall. The inspectors ought to have been forewarned, as he had been.
“We’re less than two-hundred feet in elevation here, Colonel, but you’ve chosen the perfect view across the Levels for your survey site.” She slid her glasses into the pocket of her dungarees and waited for him to work his way through the brambles, then pointed to the north with the efficiency of a Prussian tour guide. “That odd-shaped hill is Glastonbury Tor, Ynys yr Afalon in Old English—” the words rolled off her tongue like a fairy language “—the Isle of Avalon. Very Arthurian.”
“The Tor, yes, I’ve marked it here on my map, tho
ugh I didn’t know its name.” He unfolded the nearly featureless sheet from his pocket, oriented it toward the hill and filled in the name. “But what’s that structure on the top? Is it recent?”
“Thoroughly medieval. A solitary stone tower; all that remains of the monastery of St. Michael’s after the Dissolution. But the legends surrounding the Tor itself are older than time. Have you heard of the Red Dragon and the White doing battle beneath the Tor?”
She tipped the hat off her head, letting it hang at her back and turned the startling green of her gaze on him. Fringes of curling gold had escaped the bundled hair at her neck and now framed her face. While the soft spray of golden freckles across the bridge of her nose branded her as a farm girl, the fineness of her features spoke of an ancient, aristocratic lineage blended with the artful boldness of her father’s Stirling line.
“Red dragon,” Gideon heard himself say, wondering why those words, because he’d completely forgotten the subject they were discussing. “You said something about dragons?”
“Fanciful folklore of course, Colonel. But I’m afraid I know far too much about the mystical madness of all things Arthurian, especially when it comes to Glastonbury and Somerset. Even the name Nimway Hall has all to do with the legend of Nimue and Merlin.”
“King Arthur’s wizard? That Merlin?”
“The very same, the whole Matter of Britain affair. Nimue was the Lady of the Lake, ruler of Avalon, bestower of Excalibur upon Arthur after his battle sword broke, and, according to family gossips—Merlin’s lover.”
“His lover?”
“Apparently Merlin made Nimue so angry at some point in their relationship, she trapped him inside a tree. Or a stone, or a cave, depending on what you believe, or don’t. Nimway Hall itself is supposedly sitting atop the site of Nimue’s cave. Very mystical.”
Like everything about the woman. Last night’s incident with the oddly glowing orb popped into his thoughts, the iridescence of her face as she chased the object through the library. He brushed the memory aside and returned to his map.
“This long, low ridge below the Tor—”
“Wearyall Hill, location of the Holy Thorn where Joseph of Arimathea landed his boat and stuck his hawthorn staff into the ground, where from it grew a tree that blooms every Christmas.”
“Joseph of Arimathea. You mean the uncle of Jesus?” Gideon couldn’t help his chuckle. “He came to Glastonbury?”
“Founded the first monastery. And, according to Blake, might have brought the boy Jesus along with him.”
“‘And did those feet in ancient time / Walk upon England’s mountains green–‘ Blake was referring to Glastonbury?”
“Quite plainly, according to scholars and true believers.” She grinned as though teasing him, smoothed back her hair and replaced her hat. “But to continue your two-penny tour, Colonel, the Levels used to flood from here to the sea, before the monks of Glastonbury began channeling the water into the Brue.”
“A hell of an engineering project: excavating by hand, all the way to the sea.”
“But just imagine before that—the people of the Iron Age, standing on this same hill, on a moonless night, looking out as far as they could see onto a lake as still as glass, its black surface mirroring every star in the sky.”
The woman’s imagination was a palpable thing, filled his head with a glittering dark night and the sense that he and she had stood together here long ago, on this ancient hill, buffeted by the same breeze. “A carpet of constellations,” he said, surprising himself.
She swung her gaze around to him and smiled. “A lovely turn of phrase, Colonel.”
Gideon, he wanted to say, to invite her to use his given name so that she might allow him the same liberty in moments like these. But the wind had cooled and was buffeting him off balance. “Yes, well, you paint a vivid picture, Miss Stirling.”
“Josie. Please call me Josie, Colonel Fletcher. If we’re to work together.”
Bloody hell, does the woman read minds?
“And may I call you Gideon?”
Damnation! “Well, I—”
“I understand if you’d rather not, Colonel. But, for the sake of efficiency, in our private dealings, and as a gesture of good will between us, I thought—”
“Gideon.” Hell, yes. “Of course. We needn’t stand on formalities.” He felt caught out in his every thought about her. Exposed, when he’d rather have taken the upper hand in this relationship. He and she were not equals. Not in the eyes of the War Office. And not by his lights. She was a woman. A farmer. Her grasp of the complexity of war was limited to what she could see from atop the hilltop she loved so fiercely. She might be a crack forester and run her estate like a field marshal, but when it came to her ‘war effort’, as she so proudly referred to her activities, she was a civilian and would only get in his way if he allowed her to distract him from his orders.
He cleared his throat, hoping to clear his mind. “Yes, well, Josie, if you will be so kind as to confirm the name of this town—” he tapped the map which he’d been issued as a completely, utterly frustrating blank outline of Somerset county “–here, to the west of Wearyall Hill–“
”That would be Glastonbury, with the ruins of the Abbey, quite marvelous also quite mystical.“
He made a crosshatch to indicate the location of the town, then ran his finger along his own penciled-in squiggle. “This range of hills to the south–are they the Poldens?”
“Yes, and behind them farther west is the town of Taunton, which I suppose you already know.”
He made another cross-hatching for Taunton. “Not well enough.”
“Closer in to us, along that avenue of trees, is our village of Balesborough. That’s the roof of the council offices, the village hall and the church tower of St. Æthelgar in the nearer distance.”
The site of the dead drop. He wouldn’t chance a look today, in broad daylight; the cover of darkness would have to suffice.
“We’re very proud of Æthelgar’s baptismal font; it dates from Saxon times. If you should find yourself nearby, take a look inside the sanctuary, if you’ve an interest in ecclesiastical architecture.”
Hard to best a direct invitation by the lady herself, as an excuse to be discovered wandering about the churchyard. “I might just do that.”
Her eyes brightened suddenly. “I hear a Spitfire.” She pointed directly at the glint of a low-flying airplane coming toward them across the Levels. “Looks to be heading out of Bristol.”
“You know your plane spotting,” he said, as the aircraft reduced its speed and slid past them just above eye level, through the airspace between them and the Poldens.
“Home Guard training.”
He laughed. Couldn’t help it. “You can’t be a member of the Home Guard. You’re a woman.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Most of the parish still belongs to my family, Colonel—I mean Gideon—” her eyes flashed again “—I can do most anything I want. Such as insisting that the Home Guard conduct monthly classes on a subject that everyone in the village can attend. Including school children, old men, those in reserved occupations, and, yes, women.”
“Instructions on what? Knitting?”
“The first was plane spotting, very popular. Then blackout hints. How to make a Molotov cocktail. Hand-to-hand combat using farm tools and kitchen implements.”
He wanted dearly to laugh at her bravado. “And people actually attend these classes? Men and women?”
“Standing room only. I suggest you mind your manners around the housewives of Balesborough, Gideon, and accept their invitation to the Spitfire Fund Fete, or you might find yourself with a flatiron-shaped dent in the back of your head.”
“Wielded by Mrs. Peak, I assume?” He could well imagine. “She told me all about the fete this morning. And that the lady of Nimway Hall would demand I attend, since the fete was her idea.”
“It was my idea, but I would never presume—”
“You bloody well
would. You presume more than any woman in my experience.”
“Then you must be a man of very little experience with women.” Her eyes grew large; the innuendo obviously unintended. “By which I mean—”
“That the women in my life are suppressed by me? Persecuted? Tyrannized?”
“Why? Have you many women in your life?” Her cheeks pinkened, setting off her pale freckles.
“Plenty.”
“A wife?” More blushing, her eyebrows raised.
“A mother, three younger sisters, two sisters-in-law and a few nieces. And I can assure you that each of them would laugh at the idea. Would never allow me to suppress them or their opinions.”
“But you have most certainly tried.”
“What do you mean?”
“Would you ever dare try to suppress the opinions of your brothers?”
“My brothers are significantly older than I and—” theirs had been childhoods based on fierce and unrelenting competition fomented by their father.
“And, no, of course you’ve never questioned their opinions or their actions—they’re men and anything they do or say has value.”
“That’s not what I—”
“So, will you attend the fete? The entire parish of Balesborough will be there because the point of it all is not only to raise funds to buy a Spitfire, but also to raise our collective spirits, to give us all something to believe in. To rise up together and help save England in her hour of greatest need. Just like King Arthur promised to do.”
“That’s a tall order.”
“Just you watch and wait, Gideon. Once we’ve bought the Spitfire, we’re planning to start saving for a tank for our boys in the Western Desert Force.”
A tank. A ridiculous notion on its face. A dark disappointment when they failed. But a sharp lesson in the harsh realities of war: that battles were fought on the field, not in the village square. Certainly not by women. “I wish you well.”
She stared at him for a long, challenging moment then jammed her aviator glasses onto her nose. “I hear Winnie.” She stalked back through the patch of brambles. “This way, Gideon.”
The Legend of Nimway Hall_1940_Josie Page 9