In The Service Of The Queen (The Gunsmith Book 1)

by C. K. Crigger

  I grabbed his ears and pulled him down for another kiss, touching him, learning the feel of him as I ran my hands over the contours of his face, his head.

  “Where’s your earring?” Funny. I hadn’t missed it until this very moment.

  He touched his own ear and shrugged. “I think only pirates wear earrings in this life.”

  “Well, I like it. Ethan is just too, too staid and respectable. I can visualize you as a swashbuckling pirate. You’d be great.”

  He laughed and his breath tickled the sensitive skin of my neck where he’d just been nuzzling. “I don’t think so, Boothenay. You’ve got the right man—in the wrong body.”

  Desire blazed instantly between us as he nuzzled lower and became more insistent. My back arched, so he didn’t have to hurt himself reaching for me. I had the suspicion he was the right man in whatever body he chose to occupy. Something like a hot chill, only better, so maybe it was a shiver of delight raised goose bumps on my skin. Caleb smoothed them down with a warm finger and smiled at me.

  “Cold?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  His grin grew wider. “I don’t think so either,” he said, and proceeded to prove it.

  This time he blew out the candles.

  When I could finally move, I raised up and, by the light of the dying fire, watched as Caleb slept. A deep sleep this time, for he didn’t stir when I moved away from him. His eyelashes made little black fans almost to his cheekbones, and I could see where fresh pain lines, etched in the skin beside his nose and mouth, had eased with the relaxation of sleep. Very gently, since I didn’t want to disturb him, I brushed back a lock of hair fallen over his brow. His lips quivered with a tiny smile.

  Although he couldn’t see me, I smiled at him in return. How odd, I thought, for me to be in love. I’d almost given up on the possibility, and now it was not just me, it was also Belle. Imagine that. The two of me in love with the two of him.

  I laughed silently to myself.

  Sometimes I forgot I had taken over another woman’s body and soul. Forgot that when this magical interval was over, I would be leaving a whole, separate person behind. How would Belle fare? Would she remember this? Would she still be in love with Ethan? Would she find this love affair a source of joy or of shame?

  God, let her be happy, I prayed. I knew Caleb and Ethan had enough in common to be almost the same man. How could she not care for him? Then I remembered Ethan’s leg.

  For the first time since this…what should I call it? Caleb’s Blunderbuss Affair?…had begun, I thought of Dad and of Scott waiting at home for our return. I knew Dad would always wish me joy, but Scott? How he would laugh.

  I swear I heard him as plainly as if he were in the room with me right now.

  “Twenty-seven years old, Boothenay,” he’d say. “It’s damn well time. Now you see why I’m always falling in love. Feels good, no?”

  “Feels good, yes!” I’d tell him in return. “Once is enough for me, though. This is forever.”

  “Yeah.” Scott would hoot with laughter. “Or as long as forever lasts.”

  I recalled the way Scott said Sonja’s name, so it had a different kind of sound. I had the notion Scott was learning about forever. Or as long as forever lasts.

  I had to get Caleb home—soon.

  Chapter 16

  I’d never shared a bed with another person before, and had found sleeping snuggled against Caleb’s warm body while wrapped in his arms too profound of a pleasure from which to awaken. What did finally rouse me was the chill seeping in under the quilts he’d tucked around my shoulders before he left. That, and the clatter the innkeeper’s daughter made as she built up the fire.

  The girl must have thought I was crazy when I stirred, yawned, and then, as my memory kicked in, leapt from the bed like a startled frog.

  My questing hand had found cold sheet instead of Caleb.

  “Where is he?” I asked. “Where is my…my…husband?” My tongue stuttered over the H word; still, I couldn’t very well call him a boyfriend, now could I?

  She gawked at me with wide eyes and shrugged, shaking her head.

  I’d just have to find out for myself. Barely pausing to snatch up my cloak and throw it over my naked body, I rushed out to the common room. The innkeeper was just mounting the steep stairs leading up from the cellar. He carried a small keg on his shoulder.

  “Ca…Captain Delaney,” I demanded. “Where is he?”

  The innkeeper couldn’t prevent a small smirk as he took in my state of dress, or undress, as the case may be. I can’t imagine what he was smirking at, since I had the cloak pulled snug around me. My two bare feet peeped from under the edge, but surely there was no sin in that.

  He set the keg on the scratched and dented oak counter, and reached into a pocket of his long vest. Withdrawing a small scrap of paper that had my name, Belle Winthrop, printed in block letters on one side he said disapprovingly, “ I don’t know about persons of quality. My wife would’ve snatched me bald-headed if’n I’d left her all alone in a strange place the day after we was wed.”

  I stared at him in astonishment and he said diffidently, “Begging your pardon, I’m sure, ma’am.”

  “He’s gone?” My voice must have sounded faint as I took the proffered letter.

  “Aye, ma’am. He did say to tell you as he’d be back by dinnertime.

  Here,” he added as a customer came through the open door. He blocked the other’s sight of me with his own body. “My daughter will bring you hot water and food. Do you go back to your room now.”

  An aftermath of nausea burned my throat as the first surge of adrenalin driven panic ebbed. Anger rushed in to fill its place. How dare he go off this morning without even telling me?

  With the letter seeming to almost burn in my hand, I returned to my room and jumped into the still-warm bed to thaw my icy feet. The writing on the paper intrigued me. Who had the strong hand, Caleb Deane or Captain Ethan Delaney? Or was there any difference?

  B, he had addressed the note. I hadn’t the heart to awaken you this morning. The last couple of days have been somewhat extraordinary, haven’t they? Now I’m afraid time may be running out on us, so have gone on ahead to scout the territory and meet with one or two of my contacts in the town of Princeton. I’ll be back before dark. Don’t worry. All my love, C. D.

  Don’t worry, he says? Don’t worry! If he’d been handy, I’d have killed him. Didn’t he realize how dangerous it was for us to be separated?

  Mary, the maid, arrived with the strongest tea it has ever been my misfortune to taste. One swig was enough to galvanize me into demanding my clothes and the promised hot water. I paced the floor and, in due course, a can of tepid water appeared. So did my clothes, which at some time or another, most probably when Caleb had gone out, had been taken from the room and an attempt made to render them presentable. The winter half-boots of black kid would never be the same, but then they’d never quite been in the same class as wearing a pair of Doc Martens anyway. So far as I could tell, they were one size fits all, left or right.

  The dress was in somewhat better shape. The style was not so very different than some of the fashions on the racks in the stores of my own time, having a scooped neckline and a skirt that hung nearly to my ankles. Instead of an easy cotton knit for the bodice, however, this dress had a heavy, winter weight velvet top, and I noted ruefully the creek I’d been wading in had left it sadly crushed and stained.

  A bit shrunken as well, as I discovered when I had washed as much of my person as possible, then attempted to struggle into the dress. I wished I hadn’t sent Mary away, because the fit, which had been only snug yesterday, was downright tight today and difficult to manage on my own. The skirt, made of some fabric I didn’t recognize, looked better, being only a little twisted and hanging only slightly askew.

  I ran Belle’s bone comb through my bed-spiked hair in haphazard strokes, and dug out a bottle of something with a hand-written label that said, Hu
ngary Water, which after smelling, I took to be a stand-in for Oil of Olay. I splashed it over my face and hands and decided I was as ready as I’d ever be to meet another new day in this strange, old world.

  How long an interval had passed at home? I wondered. Time had never seemed to run in the same groove when I’d been gone before.

  Perhaps, when I could be sure nobody was going to walk in on me, I’d try looking into water or tea again, and see if I could concoct a window into my own time. Not without Caleb here, though. I needed complete privacy and the safety of someone to guard my back. I couldn’t take the chance of my power being too weak to retrieve him, either, in case the magic snatched me back without him.

  The sudden wave of longing that swept over me, a longing for my home and job and family, took me by surprise. Hard on this thought, I discovered I wanted coffee—I wanted a shower. I realized what I really wanted was to go home—with Caleb. I had no curiosity left about kings or queens or any of their offspring. If I never saw another blunderbuss in my life, I would be wholly satisfied.

  And I was so angry with Caleb. What in the world did he mean by going off and leaving me alone for half the day? Gone to Princeton!

  Where the hell was Princeton? And what did he mean by contacts? I shuffled the circumference of the room again and gnawed at a dry hangnail while I waited, impatient and fearful, for his return.

  Lunchtime came and Mary, the maid, added wood to the fire and set a plate on the table. I ate a meal, which she quaintly called a nuncheon, whatever that might be. There was a slice of buttered bread and cheese—darn good cheese, too, by any standards. A pickle, and, of course, more of the strong tea completed the menu. Just to be contrary I asked for ale. When in Rome, you know, and then I wound up leaving most of the sour stuff in the mug. Not to my taste or liking! Mary giggled at my expression of revulsion, and soon we were chatting away like old friends. Eventually our conversation led to a discussion of Dartmoor prison.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” Mary said, in answer to one of my questions.

  “We have visitor’s come through here often, bound for the prison. Not quality folk, like you and your husband. Mostly the quality goes through Exeter or comes up from Plymouth by coach, but we get our share of guests just the same.”

  I didn’t flinch this time when she called Caleb my husband.

  “The prison is only twenty-odd miles straight over the moor from here—no more than a nice morning ride. Is the captain a friend of the warden, ma’am, or with some of the officers?” Mary paused and eyed me with some doubt.

  “Uh, no.” Better for this quest if I denied any friendship, I decided.

  What would she think if I told her the real connection? “I believe he said he had some family news for the doctor at Dartmoor. He shouldn’t need to speak with the warden at all. Why? Is there something wrong with the warden?”

  Mary didn’t mention that the mail would have been a quicker way to communicate with the doctor, although she did inform me the doctor’s reputation rivaled that of Captain Shortland, the warden of Dartmoor prison, in unpopularity.

  “Really?” I said. “How is that?”

  She concentrated on my request for more of the information she was practically bursting to repeat anyway. I pulled a second chair closer to the fire and invited her to sit down and chat with me a while.

  “They say he is a mean, sharp man,” she whispered, sitting on the very edge of the chair. She cast a quick look around as if she suspected her words might get back to the warden if she spoke too loudly. “They say he takes the prisoner’s food and clothing allowance and uses it to buy the very cheapest supplies for them, then puts the rest in his own bank. They say if anyone, any prisoner, dares complain, he gets thrown in the black hole for months and months on end. Likely, that prisoner will die there.

  “They’re forced to eat worms, and it’s cold and wet, so they catch typhoid fever off the very stones of the floor. They say when those Frenchies die off, and many and many do, he doesn’t report their death.

  He just keeps on drawing rations for them, and selling it to keep the money for himself.”

  With a history such as she recited, even allowing for a certain amount of exaggeration, I could see why Mary didn’t want Captain Shortland to know she’d told anyone. A man such as she described wouldn’t hesitate to punish someone who spread a story like the one she’d just repeated. A man like that wouldn’t scruple to start a bonfire in a family’s house in order to rid himself of the nuisance.

  Yet, I couldn’t still the thought in my head, that as bad as the warden of Dartmoor prison might be, he was pretty small potatoes in the context of history since his time.

  “They say?” I asked. “Who says? Don’t you think these rumors got started because prisoners always complain about their confinement?”

  Conditions might not be as bad as Mary described, but there must be at least some truth to them for the stories to circulate as far as this little backwater. And for me to have heard of them, two hundred years hence.

  “No, ma’am,” Mary said, as if wondering where I’d gotten such an idea. “It’s a fact. Matthew says so.”

  “Oh, of course, so it must be true. Who is Matthew?”

  Mary blushed. “Matthew is my betrothed. We’re going to be married in a year or two, when his business is more established.”

  I raised a questioning eyebrow. “And so?”

  “My Matthew is a carter. He hauls supplies up from Exeter to the prison. He knows the quality of the things he brings and he sees the receipts for the supplies. Matthew can read and write,” Mary said proudly. “And he knows when two and two don’t add up.”

  “Oh, my.” I nodded, catching the drift of her story. “Second class quality for a first class price. I suppose our good Captain Shortland is getting rich as Croesus.”

  “Captain Shortland is not good,” Mary said, shocked.

  “No, no. I know. Sorry, I was being silly.” I gave myself a mental kick for forgetting she might not recognize sarcasm. I didn’t want to offend her in any way. She was the best— well, the only—source of information on Dartmoor and its conditions I had found. “I suppose the prisoners are fed on moldy bread, wilted vegetables fit only for pig slop, and soup bones that have no meat. And this is when rations are plentiful—right?” I’d read that some place, so I imagined the description might not be too far off the truth.

  Mary gasped, her rosy cheeks paling. “Oh, ma’am, how did you know?”

  I could see the scene in my mind’s eye, so I went on, infusing a note of drama into my voice. “And they have no heat. It’s so cold with water dripping down the walls—drip, drip, drip—and the prisoners have no coats to wear.”

  Maybe I got a little carried away with my own histrionics. I know my blood chilled, thinking of Jonathan Harriman in such a place. I resolved that if I ever got back to Queen Charlotte, I would repeat this story to her. If the tale was true. If she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do anything about the brutality, she might at least try to alleviate the dishonesty.

  “Yes! That’s it!” Mary popped her knuckles in indignation. “That is exactly what Matthew says. He says it’s awful. Almost more than a person can bear, just to see those poor men. Why, one of the guards told him that in just the last month, seventeen prisoners have killed themselves. The guard laughed. ’Course, they’re just Frenchies. Still, I don’t hold with treating human beings that way, even if they are the enemy.”

  “You know the French are not the only ones imprisoned there,” I said. “There are Americans in that prison, for instance, who are being held because they objected to being pressed into British Service. We’re not at war with the Americans. It isn’t fair.”

  “No,” Mary said, growing more heated by the moment, although I doubt if Americans, as such, meant any more to her than did the French. “Isn’t there anything you can do, ma’am?”

  “Me? What could I do? I doubt Captain Shortland would appreciate my advice.” I put a wry expression on m
y face. “I am no one to whom they need listen or obey. And I fear it would only make matters worse should I go around begging the guards to be kind to the prisoners.

  They’d laugh at me.”

  Mary sniffed. “They’re only Somerset militia anyway. Everyone knows them Somerset soldiers are dumb as their sheep.”

  “Are they?” Bitter rivalry here, I decided, hearing her opinion of her neighbors and I wondered if County Somerset had the same lowly opinion of Devonshire folk.

  “Yes,” she answered unequivocally. “Although, sometimes the Devon militia is on guard. I guess things are no better when they’re on duty.”

  We sat in silence a while as I tried to think how to phrase the questions I wanted—needed—to ask. I couldn’t believe my own luck to have stumbled onto Mary, a girl with a modern social conscience, and a treasure trove of information as well. If Caleb had routed me out of bed to travel with him, I would have missed her. Or if the inn had been busy, she couldn’t have spared me this amount of time. Chance is a strange dictator.

  “Have you ever been there, Mary—to Dartmoor? What’s it like?”

  “I rode there with Matthew on his wagon once,” Mary said. “I didn’t pass through the gate, though. I had him let me off before we got there because I was ascared to go in the prison. Oh, ma’am, it was that loud, and the men looked so dirty and wild. I didn’t want Matthew to go in either, but he laughed at me and said they be men just the same as any other, even if they do speak a strange, foreign tongue.”

  “You saw the prisoners? Oh, you must’ve gone on a market day.”

  My ears pricked up. This was just the kind of intelligence we needed if we were to help Jon Harriman escape from the prison.

  “Every day is market day, ma’am.”

  “Every day? Are you sure?” Hmm. Seemed the old novel I’d been relying on for information had steered me wrong, unless my imperfect memory had lapsed.