To his relief, he found Mollie long since gone, run off with a sailor from Bristol. No one else associated last summer’s ranting, sober-garbed Jack Drubbs, whose only truly distinctive features had been his tall black hat and green cloak, with this quiet, plume-hatted gentleman in a once-elegant puce suit, who quirked his little finger when he took his snuff, walked mincingly and spoke in an affected manner. Having secured a room at the Rose and Thistle in Bridgwater, Drubbs—more careful now—managed to make the acquaintance of the married (but flirtatious) daughter of the cook at Axeleigh. Drubbs plied her with ale in the common room, learnt from her own lips that she’d been born and bred in Bridgwater, and then with studied casualness mentioned that he’d heard the gentry at Axeleigh were all opposed to the Duke of Monmouth.
“Not Mistress Cohstance!” exclaimed the girl, shocked—and then covered her mouth with her hand at what she’d said.
Drubbs chuckled conspiratorially. “Neither am I,” he said, and winked. The girl sighed with relief. This gentleman was one of their own—supporters of the Duke! “And neither will the Squire be when he gets a note which was entrusted to me by a friend of his,” Drubbs assured her. “Do you think you could slip that note to the Squire for me without his knowing where it came from?”
“I could give it to Mistress Constance,” ventured the cook’s daughter.
“But she’s not to know where it came from—just that it’s for the Squire.”
Flushed with unaccustomed drink, the cook’s daughter bobbed her tow head earnestly. She was delighted to ran “John Hodge’s” errand for him—especially since he gave her a pair of red garters for doing it! She visited cook at Axeleigh slightly tipsy and laid the note in Constance’s own hand and hiccupped that ’twas for the Squire but she’d not say where it came from.
Constance had assumed it was a letter from Margaret dropped off by one of the Squire’s messengers, and had scrawled the Squire’s name on it before putting it on the hall table. Her mind had been diverted by other things and it was something of a shock to see it delivered by Stebbins at dinner and observe the Squire’s morose demeanor as he read it. Could something be wrong in Devon?
After supper, she had sought him out. “I thought the note might be from Margaret. Is she all right?”
Clifford Archer had turned to her with a frown. “No, it was a receipt as I told you. I have not heard from Margaret recently.”
Both statements were lies. He could not allow Constance to read Margaret’s most recent letter, urging him to betroth the girl to Tony Warburton!
But Constance, although puzzled, accepted his words. After all, it made sense—cook’s blowzy daughter had been imbibing ale somewhere and had been entrusted to deliver this receipt. In her befuddlement, she had given the impression that the Squire was not to know where it came from, when actually she’d wanted to keep where she’d been and who she’d been with from cook, who frowned on her daughter’s wandering ways!
So Constance reasoned—plausibly and wrongly.
Chapter 22
The Twelve Days of Christmas, with all its festivities and merrymaking, had its jovial grip on the Valley of the Axe. It had snowed heavily late Christmas Eve and all of Christmas Day, keeping all but the bravest at home. Axeleigh’s squire had decreed that the ladies of the house were not to brave the tempest. Presiding in regal splendor at the head of his holiday-decked table, he had carved up the traditional Christmas goose, stuffed with chestnuts and oysters. And as they ate their steaming plum pudding—feeling as stuffed as Christmas geese themselves—from the servants’ hall came the strains of the Christmas carol “Our Joyful’st Feast,” popular since Cromwell’s time. The Squire’s household was loosely run. He only smiled as the cook’s cracked voice, dominating the others in song, drifted in through the dining room door exhorting everyone to drown their sorrows in wine and be merry!
Pamela kept wondering aloud all through dinner how things were at Huntlands, but the Squire refused to take the hint.
“I’m sure they’re well enough,” he told his daughter calmly. “Tom Thornton’s a good hand on the reins—for all he has no wife to guide him!” He laughed and quaffed his wine.
A shadow of a frown passed over Pamela’s pretty face. She thought that Tom was probably out on horseback, jogging through the snow right now—and probably in the direction of Hawley Grange! She sighed.
Constance looked up at the frosted panes. Another Christmas, she was thinking, with sleet scratching at the window-panes and the wind howling outside. The weather had turned truly bitter and cold was creeping in around the panes and chilling her ankles—indeed she might have been in Yorkshire, not Somerset! But here, regardless of the weather, there’d be frolics and merriment all during the Twelve Days of Christmas and she’d be expected to join in, no matter how she felt.
Like the planned sleighride to Warwood later this week, picking up other sleighs on the way and making an overnight
party of it....She was supposed to go with Ned. How she wished she could bow out of that one!
Not only did the snow fall heavily through the night but it hardened on the ground and its surface was such that when it stopped snowing the day after Christmas, sleds were soon flying about merrily and horses, their ankles carefully wrapped against ice cuts, pulled sleighs tinkling with bells and alive with merrymakers from house to house, fording small frozen streams along the way.
Pamela and Constance spent that day dashing about the country in the Squire’s sleigh, with the Squire driving, making hasty calls on the neighbors and bringing with them gifts of big plum cakes and chestnut cookies thickly iced.
The next day found them at home receiving scads of callers, and serving great quantities of wine and accepting with thanks dozens of other plum cakes and baskets of Christmas cookies and other goodies. Everyone remarked on the beauty of Axeleigh’s festive decorations and both girls were hard put to avoid the young bucks who kept maneuvering them beneath the mistletoe hung on the hall chandelier. The Squire was a jovial host and had they not had so many other places to go, his guests would have lingered, lounging about Axeleigh’s flaming hearth.
Constance was glad to hear the rafters of Axeleigh ring with merriment, glad to be talking first to this one and then to that one. It kept her mind off her inner loneliness and her shame that she found herself turning sharply every time the front door opened to see if Captain Warburton might not be one of the arriving guests.
It was Dev’s fault, she thought angrily, when the day was done at last, the festive callers all gone home, a late supper hastily got through and all of Axeleigh gone to bed.
Constance stood huddled in a violet woolen wrapper staring out of her bedroom window at the white and silver world the moonlight had created out of the snowy landscape. Across her line of vision a red fox trotted, leaving dainty little tracks in the snow, and disappeared into a dark line of trees. He was headed toward Warwood, she thought with a pang, and if he made tracks long enough he might even reach there tonight and perhaps find his ladylove....
She brought herself up short and again thought hotly, This is all Dev’s fault! Everything that has happened to me! For hers was a warm, impulsive nature. She was not made of stone. She could not be expected never to look at another man while she pondered whether her young highwayman husband was alive or dead! If Dev had proved true, she would never have sought out Margaret in Devon, never met Tony Warburton, never fallen in love with him against her will.
If only.... But it had all happened and now she was doubly miserable. This was her second Christmas without Dev—one in Devon, one in Somerset. For a wild spiteful moment she wished him dead and then she burst into tears and leaned against the cold windowpane and listened to the little clink of icicles dropping off and tinkling as they fell.
It would have driven her mad to know that in Lincoln Dev was thinking of her. He’d made a rich haul this week—a fat tax collector had dared to use the Great North Road and been lighter in the purse for it—so Dev
was in funds. With a girl on each arm, he strode into a “safe” inn where the landlord winked at such as he so long as they paid in yellow gold. Prepared for a wild Christmas season, was Dev.
And then across the room, the tavern maid, with her long dark hair and her willowy body, reminded him suddenly of Constance, and the holiday revelry turned to ashes in his mouth. He rose and told the landlord in a taciturn voice to give the girls all the ale they wanted and then trudged out for a long lonely walk in the snow. After which he proceeded to get very drunk. He woke with a terrible hangover and told himself firmly that one wench was as good as another.
But he couldn’t make himself believe it. Constance, he knew, had been different.
Leaning miserably against the windowpanes at Axeleigh, Constance would have been gratified to know it. As it was, she presumed the worst of him and let her hot, reckless thoughts drift toward Tony Warburton.
By the Fourth Day of Christmas, Constance had had time to think over the day she and Pamela had ridden to Hawley Grange and she had made her disconcerting request to become a traveling courier for the group of Monmouth supporters. If she had hoped they would reconsider, she was doomed to disappointment, for although they had held a brief and unsatisfying discussion of her after she had left, they were of one mind when it came to letting her out of their sight.
In truth the group did not trust her. Had she not stumbled upon Galsworthy trying to deliver a message to cook one dusk and discovered from cook—who had stepped on a thorn and could hardly walk—that the message was for Tom Thornton at Huntlands, had Tom not chanced by at almost the same time and Constance, seeing him, dashed out to deliver the message, she would never have carried messages for them at all.
“She appeared the same night the King’s men pursued poor Netherbury to his death, the same night that masked woman disappeared,” Brad Hawley, the only son among all those daughters at Hawley Grange, had objected after Constance had stalked out of the group on Christmas Eve.
“I’ll hear no word spoken against Mistress Constance!” Ned Warburton jumped up threateningly.
“Easy, Ned.” Beside him Tom Thornton laid a detaining hand on Ned’s arm. “Let me handle this. ’Twas only because the Squire wished to introduce his ward to the county at the Midsummer Masque that she was there at all. A coincidence, that’s all.”
“And then she turns up delivering Galsworthy’s message to you. It’s too pat, Tom. Too pat indeed.”
Tom sighed. Even as he leant forward he was urging Ned back into his seat. “Again that was mere happenstance. Brad. Mistress Constance had come into the kitchen as Galsworthy was delivering the note. The cook at Axeleigh had hurt her foot, Constance offered to take the note—”
“That cook is a blundering fool,” grumbled Brad Hawley. “She could get us all killed.”
“I agree,” said Tom coolly. “And I’d far rather Galsworthy delivered his messages to Mistress Constance than to the cook. Besides, as the Squire’s ward and a newcomer to boot, who’d suspect her?”
“I do,” said Brad Hawley in a gloomy voice.
Stafford’s big head had sunk into his shoulders. Now he straightened up and gave the contenders a hard look. “We’ve discussed this before,” he said. “No use going over plowed ground. It was agreed we’d watch her.” Across the room Ned flushed but Stafford’s glance silenced him. “We’ve let her deliver Galsworthy’s messages to Tom—but that’s all. And that’s all it will be unless we’ve some desperate need of her. We’ve found no reason to distrust her. In fact, cook reports that every word she’s said to the servants reveals her to be an ardent supporter of the Cause. Still we’ll take no unnecessary risks. But Hawley here is right to make us consider, for you’ll all agree, even though Tom—perhaps rightly—considers it happenstance that Mistress Constance arrived the very night poor Netherbury was killed and a woman disappeared from Huntlands—”
“We had the famous Masked Lady in our midst and had not the wit to realize it,” protested Tom. “She left lest they take her.”
Stafford frowned at this interruption. “And now the Squire’s ward grows restless and asks us to support her in some far place. On the road, roaming about in coaches carrying messages. What d’ye think the Squire would say to that, Tom?”
Tom shrugged. “I doubt she gave much thought to what the Squire would think about it. She hasn’t thought it through. Once she has, she’ll realize her folly and abandon the idea herself.”
“I’ll vouch for her!” cried Ned in fury.
“We don’t need advice from the love-besotted!” muttered Hawley.
“That you vouch for her is not the problem, Ned.” Stafford waved Hawley to silence and turned his attention now in Ned Warburton’s direction. “The problem, Ned, is whether we can trust her. We’re all of us risking our necks in this thing, and with the King’s men roaming about the countryside we can’t afford to take chances.” He brought his hand down hard upon his thigh. “We’ll table the matter of Mistress Constance,” he said harshly. “It can be brought up again if new information surfaces.”
The subject of all this discussion would have been indignant to discover that they did not trust her. For was she not risking her neck like the rest, receiving Galsworthy’s messages and passing them on to Tom? Who knew, the King’s men might be following Galsworthy any day and catch her in their net?
But it was not a danger she gave much thought to. The emotional turmoil into which she had spun at Axeleigh occupied her thoughts far more.
Now on this Fourth Day of Christmas she was standing by the window in Pamela’s bedchamber, watching occasional light snowflakes drift lazily down. Behind her Pamela, dressed in tailored indigo blue wool for the outdoors, was letting Dick Peacham, who had arrived all the way from Taunton by sleigh, cool his heels downstairs while she burrowed through her belongings in an attempt to find a favorite fan (for it was fashionable to carry fans even in winter!). As usual she was talking a blue streak. She was reminiscing as she tossed things about helter-skelter.
“That was a terrible summer for us here,” Pamela recalled, her voice slightly muffled by a large gray veil which she had unearthed and which her energetic rummaging had caused to float up, almost covering her mouth.
“Was it?” murmured Constance. She was worlds away, her thoughts flying down the highroad with a wild young highwayman.
“Yes.” Pamela pushed aside the veil and with it a couple of pinners. “Oh, dear, I don’t seem to be able to find anything! Yes—first Mother died and then before Father got over the shock of that, Aunt Margaret died in Bath.”
“What was she doing in Bath?” asked Constance idly, wondering if the rider she could see at the far end of the driveway could be Tom. If so, Dick Peacham would find himself left out in the cold!
“Well, to tell you the truth”—Pamela began scattering gloves and laces and whisks about the floor as she rummaged—“I don’t think she wanted to wear mourning for my mother. They didn’t like each other very much and I remember Aunt Margaret left the house wearing an orange dress.”
How like Margaret! thought Constance. Displaying her disapproval for all the world to see!
“That must have annoyed your father,” she said.
“Oh, he said he was used to Margaret’s ‘ways’ and expected no better,” said Pamela ruefully. “Where is that fan?”
“Perhaps it’s in that chest over there?” suggested Constance.
“Yes, you might be right.” Pamela scrambled up, strewing collars and tie-on sleeves and striped clocked stockings as she went. “Anyway, Father went around looking like a ghost. I was only ten at the time and at first he wasn’t going to take me with him, but then he did....”
“Take you where?” asked Constance absently, watching the snowflakes fall.
“To Aunt Margaret’s funeral—oh, here’s my fan! Imagine finding it stuffed in among these gloves! Now if I can just find my fur muff!”
“You went to Bath for the funeral? But I thought—”
“Oh, no, they brought her body back here—all that way. I remember the closed coffin—that was because she was so beautiful and her dying words, Father said, were to keep the lid shut and let people remember her as she had been in all her beauty.”
Constance’s eyes smarted. She closed them for a moment and then opened them again. The snow was still falling. “Is that how it was?” she asked softly.
“Yes.” Pamela’s head was ducked down and she was rummaging again. “Everybody was crying and Captain Warburton was just ashen at the funeral and everybody expected him to kill himself with drink, but he didn’t. He got married instead right away and you should have seen my father’s face when he heard about that! He turned pale and just sort of rocked on his feet and then he shut himself in his study and I could hear him crying. Imagine! He didn’t cry when Aunt Margaret died but he cried when Captain Warburton married another girl after she died! I could never understand it.”
Constance could.
“Everything went wrong that summer,” sighed Pamela.
“Oh, here’s my muff!” She twirled it. “That summer my favorite colt died, and Tom nearly drowned when he fell into the river and his coat caught on a floating tree branch—he was showing off for me at the time, and people were afraid Father had brought the smallpox back with him from Bath and nobody came to visit us that whole summer.”
“Except Tom,” supplied Constance, who had by now decided the rider was someone else. His head looked unduly large. Why, it was that fellow they’d met outside Hawley Grange—Chesney Pell.
“Except Tom, of course.” Pamela looked proud and flirted her fan, dimpling. “Tom wouldn’t let the threat of smallpox keep him away.” Puss came into the room swishing his tail and suddenly her mercurial spirits changed. “Do you think I could train Puss to eat at table?” she demanded. “Margie Hamilton told me about a cat in Brighton that sits at table and eats every course—even bits of sallet!”
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