The Regency Romances of Mira Stables: Part One

by Mira Stables

  Giles shrugged. “As to that I’d not be knowing. Jasie didn’t say much about her. Too took up with Emma and his son. But I recognised the little wench straight off. She and her mother were with the regiment at Shorncliffe. I wonder you don’t remember her, for a proper madcap she was, and crazy about the horses. Always slipping off to the stables whenever she could escape from her governess. Her mother was a sweet gentle lady, but sickly. Her papa was the only one Miss Helen minded, and he backed her up in most of her mischief. Brought her up more like a lad than a little lady. Military discipline he said was the way to control her, and he taught her to fence and shoot and ride and never to fear a tumble. I did hear tell she was a fair shot—for a female of course.”

  Charles laughed, in spite of the pain it gave him. “In that case I must be thankful, as the lady herself said, that she decided not to shoot me but only to break my head. At the time I thought she was romancing.”

  Giles cocked an enquiring eyebrow.

  “She was talking to your brother who was trying, without much success, to convince her of the impropriety of her behaviour. Apparently she only decided against shooting because the noise might disturb Emma. I must certainly remember to express my gratitude to your sister-in-law.”

  “Aye, she’s a proper little varmint is Miss Helen,” agreed Giles, “but she was as sorry as anything when I explained who you were, and nothing would do for her but to look after you herself while I saw to the nags. Which we were main glad of, with the house in such an uproar over this young nevvy of mine.”

  “Well let her go nurse your nephew but keep her out of here,” retorted Charles. “All I need is a night’s sleep to set me to rights. Do you go and see if you can fend off this doctor and his draught. A composer indeed!”

  Giles rubbed his nose reflectively. “Might serve us a good turn, Master Charles. You could make out to be worse than you are. Give us an excuse to stop on here a day or two, and it’s a deal more handy for our job than Trevannions.”

  Charles mulled the suggestion over. “You’re right of course,” he agreed, “but we can scarcely expect your brother to put us up under the circumstances. With his wife laid up he’ll have enough on his hands.”

  “Oh no, sir! He’s got plenty of help in the house. Jasie wouldn’t go for to turn you out—a badly injured man!” declared Giles soulfully.

  “Any more of your impudence, my lad, and there’ll be a badly injured man,” grunted Charles. “And a fine fool I’m going to look, lying here moaning about a knock on the head. But you’re right as usual, damn you. Lead on your doctor. But I’m hanged if I’m swallowing his poisonous potion. You can get rid of that for me, even if it comes to swallowing it yourself. And keep Miss Easton and her lavender water out of here,” he concluded, turning over his damp pillow and arranging himself to portray the picture of a man in the last extreme of exhaustion and pain.

  Chapter Four

  He woke early with a pleasant feeling of well-being. Sunshine was playing gently over the bed from the open casement. The air was pleasantly fresh after yesterday’s rain, and sweet with the scent of the honeysuckle that wreathed the window frame. He had slept soundly and long without benefit of Dr. Hilsborough’s draught. Giles had obediently disposed of that, supplying instead a generous platter of beef sandwiches and a tankard of his brother’s home brewed, which he smuggled in to the ‘invalid’ after the rest of the household had finally gone to bed.

  Thus fortified, Charles had promptly gone to sleep, and now felt none the worse for his misadventure of the previous evening. It was going to be difficult to play the invalid convincingly. Already he was remarkably hungry, and the tantalising odours of coffee and frying ham which presently drifted through the window to mingle with the heavy sweetness of the honeysuckle did nothing to diminish his appetite. With growing impatience he awaited the arrival of Giles. But the knock which eventually sounded on the door panel heralded the arrival of Miss Helen Easton, carrying a coffee pot and attended by a sturdy looking damsel bearing a well laden tray.

  “Oh! You look so much better this morning,” she cried. “Dr. Hilsborough will be much relieved. He was quite anxious about you last night, fearing some hidden injury, since he could find nothing to account for the symptoms that you described. I shall tell him that his draught has quite restored you. The improvement is almost magical.”

  Entirely magical, agreed Charles, whole-heartedly if silently, remembering how Giles had poured the evil looking concoction out of the window, where doubtless it was applying its beneficial properties to the roots of the honeysuckle.

  Miss Easton directed the maid to draw up a stool which would accommodate the coffee pot and arranged the tray to her satisfaction, explaining the while that Giles was busy in the stable but would be up to wait on his master before very long. “He would have brought up your breakfast, but I wished to bring it myself so that I could speak to you. Yes, that will do nicely, Bella. You can go down now and help Mistress Hannah. I shall not be very long.”

  Charles eyed Miss Easton with some misgivings. He wished she would go away and allow him to enjoy his breakfast in peace. She was standing very straight beside the bed, her hands tightly clasped at her breast, and he suddenly realised that she was desperately nervous.

  “Yes?” he said on a note of encouragement, for the ham was going cold.

  “I told you a lie yesterday,” she brought out breathlessly. “I said you’d met with an accident. You didn’t. I hit you, because I thought you were a housebreaker.”

  Her head was well up, but Charles could see that her lips were quivering and a little pulse in her throat was beating furiously.

  “So then you tended me yourself to make amends, and brought me this coffee which smells so delicious. I hope all my enemies will treat me with equal kindness,” he said, smiling.

  The tight clasped hands relaxed, and her face lit joyfully. “Oh! I do so hope you will like the coffee,” she cried. “I made it myself, just as Papa always liked it. And it really was a kind of accident—my hitting you I mean. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known who you were. So perhaps it wasn’t a very bad lie after all.”

  There was a wistful note about this, and Charles found himself assuring her that it really wasn’t a lie at all, merely a dissimulation, perfectly understandable in the circumstances. Under the spell of those glorious eyes—sunlit hazel they were this morning—he was on the verge of assuring her that he really rather liked being hit over the head, in a perfectly friendly fashion of course. Fortunately, before he committed this final idiocy, she went on eagerly, “If you’ve truly forgiven me, perhaps you’ll permit me to come and talk to you—about Spain and the regiment. There is so much that I want to know.”

  Charles understood that what she really wanted was to hear him speak of her father. The chance of talking with someone who had been near him in the last months of his life might never come again. He did not relish the prospect, but in common decency he could scarcely refuse. He said that it would be very agreeable to have company later on—“when I am a little more presentable for a lady’s society,” he stipulated, rubbing rueful fingers over his unshaven jaw and suddenly aware of the shocking spectacle he must present, attired as he was in the landlord’s nightshirt.

  Enjoying a hearty breakfast, he even devoted a few minutes thought to the mystery of Helen Easton’s presence, apparently unattended, in this tiny inn. But it was, after all, no business of his. He applied himself instead to consideration of his own dilemma. His pretended disability certainly gave him an excuse for lingering in Springbourne, but it also hampered his personal activities. If he was supposedly incapacitated he could scarcely stroll about the countryside engaging in the sort of casual converse that Mr. Gressingham had suggested.

  That the whole community was probably involved in smuggling activities he had little doubt. It was so much a commonplace that the odd thing would be to find someone who wasn’t involved. He was not particularly interested in the wholesale apprehension o
f smugglers—that was a job for the preventives. But somewhere among their venal ranks were the callous traitors who were willing to betray their own countrymen for French gold, the men to whom slitting a throat was no more than wringing a chicken’s neck. Sussex born himself, he could not work up much genuine wrath against ordinary smuggling, though he was well aware that it led to violence and crime. Selling information was a very different matter. Lying in his comfortable bed in an English inn, with the sweet airs of an English summer morning drifting over him and an excellent English breakfast inside him, Charles thought of the cheerful indomitable scallywags he had left behind in Spain. The thought that even one of them might be betrayed to his death by the informer he was hoping to unmask made it perfectly possible to summon up some enthusiasm for the task. Indeed he felt capable of doing a little throat slitting on his own account. But lying in bed feigning ill-health wasn’t going to get him very far, and he lay awaiting the coming of Giles in a fury of impatience.

  When at last the big groom put in an appearance, he was accompanied by his brother, a genial giant of much the same stamp, who had to be presented in form. A few moments were passed pleasantly enough in exchanging views on the recent exploits of the Division and in answering Jasie’s particular enquiries about old acquaintances in the 52nd. He also enquired, but casually, after his guest’s well-being, and grinned over his mishap of the previous evening.

  “Aye—well—she’s a mettlesome lass is Miss Nell,” he submitted, “and she’s cause enough to be anxious, so I hope you’ll not be too hard on her. Anyway, from what our Giles tells me, she’s not done you such a bad turn.” He stumped across to the window seat, explaining that his peg leg, while good enough for most jobs, didn’t take kindly to overmuch standing. “So if it’s all the same to you, Sir, I’ll just sit here and keep an eye on things while you tell me what way I can best serve you.”

  “I told him you were here to make a few enquiries, quiet like, and that maybe he’d be able to give us a few pointers,” threw in Giles.

  Charles nodded. Mr. Gressingham had urged upon him the need for the utmost caution and secrecy. “Trust no one,” he had said. But you would get nowhere without asking questions, and any sensible man must see where the questions were leading. Jasie would have to be trusted with the story, and Charles had a pretty good notion that the trust was not misplaced.

  Certainly he had not overestimated the innkeeper’s intelligence. He was prompt to offer a practical suggestion. “If it’s Bart Rudd at the Fleece that you’re nosing after, I’ll send along to see if he can let me have a drop of brandy, seeing as how I don’t keep suchlike. But with a sick man staying in the house I might be needing it. Young Giles here can take the message. That way he’ll get alongside o’ Bart, and maybe he’ll stumble across something. It’s the only way he’d notice it,” he added with a fraternal grin at ‘young Giles.’ “If he doesn’t,” he went on, ducking away from the cuff aimed at his head and growing serious again, “then you’ll have to remove to the Fleece. I’m not a man as has much patience with niffy-naffy invalid fancies, so the Fleece’ll be the place for you.” He grinned amiably at Charles’s indignant face.

  “I knew I’d have done better to stay in Spain,” growled the ungrateful invalid. “Can you and Giles find me no better employment than to lie here, allowing it to be known that a tap on the head from a schoolgirl has laid me out?”

  “Ah, but it won’t be known, Sir,” smiled Jasie indulgently. “Miss Nell ’ud never let on that an officer of the 52nd could have such a trick served on him.”

  The reply did nothing to assuage Charles’s wrath. Giles, with commendable tact, pointed out that as they had already told Dr. Hilsborough that Captain Trevannion had met with an accident, it wouldn’t do to change the tale now.

  “And just what fairy tale did you tell?” asked Charles sourly.

  “Said you’d cracked your head on one of they beams in the parlour,” he was told, “and I’m sure it’s no wonder if you did, for I’ve done it myself a time or two. I’ve often wondered why this great hulking good-for-naught doesn’t have the ugly things taken out.”

  “Just because some folk walk about with their eyes shut—or maybe their skins so full of my good ale that they can’t see a lump of solid oak, you’d have me pull my good parlour about, would you?” retorted his brother. “I’ll have you know they beams are nigh on a hundred years old. Come out of the Royal William when she was broke up. Done more for old England than ever you have, my lad, those beams.”

  These brotherly recriminations might have continued indefinitely but for Charles’s prompt intervention. “I suppose it’s a good enough tale,” he allowed grudgingly, before Giles could take up his brother’s challenge. “Anyway it will have to serve, since, as you say, it won’t do to alter it now. You get over to Wintringham then, Giles, and see about this cognac. Tell him it must be the real stuff—that I’ll not have any of your Spanish brandy. If he can produce it, then he’s either a magician or he’s hand in glove with the smugglers.”

  Jasie looked dubious. “I never heard aught against Bart Rudd,” he mentioned thoughtfully. “He’s a foreigner in course. Came down from London. Can’t say he’s a man I take to, but he’s affable enough. Nor I never heard of him having any dealings with the ‘gentlemen’. Which ain’t to say he don’t. But I’d have thought to hear about it.” And his mild blue eyes regarded Charles with a sly twinkle which indicated that he himself was pretty well informed about the doings of those mysterious ‘gentlemen’.

  Charles suddenly remembered his own passing thought that it would be the man who wasn’t apparently involved in smuggling who would seem out of pattern in the Sussex countryside. The landlord of the Fleece might well repay investigation.

  He resolutely resisted Giles’s attempts to persuade him to stay in bed. He would play the invalid if he must, but only to the extent of sitting in the rocking chair with a dressing-gown over his shirt and breeches and a patchwork quilt, removed from the bed by Giles, carefully tucked about his resentful limbs. Thus established he felt capable of receiving Miss Easton’s promised visit.

  She came, rather shyly, just before noon, and perched on the window seat, her expression half friendly half doubtful, and asked him how he did.

  “As well as can be expected,” said Charles mournfully, and then added, with a rueful twinkle and one hand indicating the bruise over his right ear, “What in the world did you use? A sledge hammer?”

  “No. The poker from Emma’s bedroom fireplace,” said the literal minded Miss Easton solemnly.

  “But of course! I recall now that I read in some journal or other that poker work was the very latest fashionable accomplishment for young ladies. I had understood however that the poker was usually heated first, and can only be grateful that on this occasion you omitted that necessary preliminary.”

  Under his serious gaze her expression changed from solemn wonderment to amused appreciation, and at his final comment she gave a soft little crack of laughter. “You’re roasting me,” she declared, quite unconscious that the phrase was a little unusual on the lips of a delicately bred young lady. “Papa was used to do that, and with just such a sober face. You are the most complete hand, and I had begun to think you—” she broke off in sudden dismay.

  Charles had a very fair idea of what she had started to say. Maliciously—but after all he owed her something for that crack on the head—he repeated gently, “You had begun to think me?”

  The girl didn’t answer directly, though quick colour flooded her cheeks. Instead she said, “Why are you home on furlough? The division may well be over the Pyrenees by now.”

  That was a smart recover thought Charles appreciatively. This soldier’s daughter certainly knew the value of a brisk counter attack, even if her social manner left a good deal to be desired. “I was wounded you know,” he said softly, watching her face with interest. “Before the poker work,” he qualified.

  She refused to be amused. “I see,” she sai
d, coolly scornful. “It doesn’t seem to be a very serious wound.” It was clear that she had the poorest opinion of an officer who applied for sick leave on such feeble grounds.

  “Also my grandfather died recently, and I have certain business affairs to settle,” he offered hopefully.

  This did not appear to improve his standing in the lady’s eyes. Her attitude remained aloof as she expressed conventional sympathy over the death of his grandfather and then added in a stiff little voice, “It is quite your own affair of course, but I should have thought—” and stopped again.

  But Charles had had enough of her half sentences. Also he was discovering in himself an odd desire to stand well with her. “You would have thought that I’d prefer to be with my regiment. And you are perfectly right of course. Without wishing to appear discourteous, I would, at this moment, infinitely prefer to be in Spain. Unfortunately I was allowed no choice in the matter.”

  The girl’s face cleared, and she said eagerly, “Oh! You were ordered home in fact. Did you bring despatches?”

  Charles shook his head, realising the pit he had dug for his own feet. This bright-eyed intelligent child was becoming much too curious. He remembered thankfully that she had been brought up under military discipline. Perhaps that would hold her off. “A soldier obeys his orders. He neither questions them nor discusses them with strangers,” he said quellingly.

  The outrageous girl actually laughed at him. “Oh! What a horrid set-down,” she chuckled. “But I expect I deserved it. Very well. I won’t ask you any more. But there are lots of things you could tell me about Spain without broaching military secrecy,” she said coaxingly.

  This was the inquisition he had dreaded. Hastily he searched his mind for details that he might fitly present to a young girl totally ignorant of the realities of war. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to describe the fall of Badajos without allowing the sheer horror of attack and sack to invade the story, but he must do his best.