Amanda Scott (16 page)

“Down there by the wall,” said Lady Henrietta, “you can see the martello tower they are building to protect the sluice gates. Of course, they ought to have begun work two years ago, only that milksop, Prime Minister Addington, refused to spend any money whatsoever for defense.”

“Well, after all, ma’am, he thought he would be able to arrange a lasting peace with the French.”

“And so he disbanded our military and stopped all the funds meant to build defenses along this coast,” said Lady Henrietta tartly. “I’d no patience with the man. Thank heaven Mr. Pitt is back in power, and none too soon.”

“Why is this tower so important?” Adriana asked. She could see that the structure, a round stone form, narrower at the top than at the bottom, already rose some twenty feet above the shore. “And what are the sluice gates, precisely?”

“Why, they control the water level of Romney Marsh, my dear. The whole marsh is below high-tide level. Dymchurch itself is more than seven feet below. Without those gates, the whole thing would be awash in no time. Indeed, that is one of our defense plans, to flood everything if necessary.”

“That seems a trifle hard on the inhabitants.”

“Sacrifice is often necessary for the greater good, my dear,” replied Lady Henrietta calmly.

There was nothing to say to that, and they had arrived at the church, opposite the town hall in a side street. Alighting from the carriage, Adriana followed Lady Henrietta into the dimly lit hall, where a group of five ladies awaited them. Lady Hetta introduced her and was quickly submerged in details of their inventory. Having sat through enough of that sort of thing for one day, Adriana soon made her excuses and went back outside.

Wittersham was pacing up and down near the hedge separating churchyard from roadway, but Jacob lolled against the rear of the carriage again, eyes shut, arms folded across his chest, in much the same position he had taken in Burmarsh. Adriana, shaking her head at Wittersham when he moved to approach her, went straight toward the rear of the carriage, a mischievous grin on her face.

“Oh, Jacob,” she crooned softly. “Jacob, do wake up.” When he blinked, then straightened so quickly that he nearly lost his balance, her grin broadened. “I daresay you must be very tired, Jacob. Whatever did you do last night when you ought to have been sleeping the sleep of the innocent?”

He glanced in Wittersham’s direction, then back at Adriana. “I dunno what ye mean, m’lady.”

“Yes, you do, Jacob, and you needn’t fear that I am angry with you, for I am not. Not at all. I think it must be dreadfully exciting to be a landsman for the free traders. If ladies could do such things, I should join you in a twink.”

The lad looked horrified. “Ye mustn’t think such things. Indeed, it ain’t fittin’ fer such a fine lady.” Then, realizing that he had pretty well condemned himself out of his own mouth, he glanced fearfully in Wittersham’s direction again. “We oughtn’t to speak of such, m’lady.”

“What? Will Wittersham squeak beef on you? You see, I know some slang, Jacob. I am not at all nice in my ways, sometimes, and I have a burning wish to know more about smuggling. Pray do not tell me you have naught to do with such, stuff. Why, you must be very brave, and very clever, too, to evade the riding officer so easily as I’m told you do. It all sounds most exciting.”

He blinked. Clearly he had never thought of himself as particularly brave before. Squaring his shoulders and drawing himself to his full six-foot height, he looked down at her with pride. “It ain’t so hard bein’ shut o’ Mr. Petticrow, m’lady, that it ain’t. More like a game it be, us’n agin him. When he’s south, we be north, and turn about. Some o’ the lads keep watch, o’ course, but we knows the route he means to take long afore he’s in ’is saddle.”

“His lordship said poor Mr. Petticrow has to watch five whole miles of coastline,” Adriana said. “It hardly seems fair.”

Jacob’s look was one of amused tolerance now. “Mr. Petticrow be a nice gentleman, m’lady, and none wishes ’im ill, so it be as well that he have a good, long route and can be kept well out o’ harm’s way, partikler since ’e won’t take gelt fer to turn ’is eyes ter the wall—money, that is, ter look the other way,” he added when she looked bewildered. “There’s some as ain’t so tolerant o’ their riding officers as we be.”

“It seems odd to me that he never caught wind of the daylight run the other day,” Adriana said innocently.

Jacob stared at her. “What be ye knowin’ about that, m’lady?” Then, before she could speak, his brow cleared and he said, “Oh, aye, the lads said ye was aboard
Sea Dragon
when the master discovered she’d been out. That were a near thing fer Mr. Curry, that were.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, m’lady, in the general way o’ things, the master do look t’other way. But though he don’t look ter cross the Gentlemen, he didn’t like ’em usin’ ’is boat, ’n’ that’s a fact.”

“Why, he didn’t seem very angry,” Adriana said, “only a little displeased. I was there, Jacob, and I can tell you he didn’t so much as raise his voice to Captain Curry.”

The footman grimaced. “He don’t never raise his voice, m’lady, but that don’t mean poor Mr. Curry weren’t shakin’ in ’is boots when he realized ’is lordship ’ad discovered he’d been a-helpin’ of the Gentlemen, ’n’ all. When the master’s angry, his voice can freeze the marrow in a man’s bones, and that’s a fact. So if it be all the same to you, ma’am, I’d as lief ye don’t go a-tellin’ ’im ye think I be part o’ the business. I’m right sorry I nodded off t’day, but ’tis all a man can do to stay awake when he’s just a-settin’ about in the sun, even if he hasn’t been up all hours the night before. I’d not like the master to think I’d been out ’n’ about and then shirkin’ m’ duty.”

“Oh, Jacob, of course I shall say nothing to the master, not about anything you tell me, so you needn’t trouble your head about that. Tell me more about Mr. Petticrow. Does he not have dragoons he can call upon to help him watch his bit of coast?”

“Only if he knows certain sure that there’s a run on, and we take precious care that he don’t.”

“Here, lad,” said Wittersham, coming quickly up to them, his weathered face set in stern lines. “What be ye about, jawin’ at ’er ladyship when ye oughta be a-helpin’ ’er into the carriage? I’m right sorry if he’s discommoded ye, m’lady.”

Jacob reddened to his ears, but Adriana smiled at the middle-aged coachman and said, “Pray do not scold him, Wittersham. I asked him to speak to me, for I wish to know something about the Gentlemen hereabouts. Perhaps you can tell me more about their activities than Jacob has been able to. I daresay a man of your vast experience could tell a great deal.”

The coachman grimaced. “It ain’t fer me to be tellin’ yer la’ship what ye ought and oughtn’t to talk about, but ye’d do well to keep mum on that subject, ma’am, and that’s the truth of the matter, that is. Lady Henrietta be on the stoop wi’ some o’ her ladies. She’ll be right along now, so best ye be lettin’ Jacob help ye inside.”

“Very well, Wittersham.” Disappointed, Adriana turned again to the young footman, awarding him a friendly smile. “You may give me your hand, Jacob.” Inside the carriage, she noted that the coachman followed Jacob around behind, and she soon heard Wittersham’s gruff voice, pitched too low for her to make out his words, but carrying unmistakable censure in his tone.

Adriana was sorry that the young footman had been scolded for talking to her, but in the week that followed, as she went about her activities, she found herself watching the castle servants with an eagle eye, trying to determine which ones among them were involved with the Gentlemen and which were not. It was something to break the tedium, although if she had been pressed to tell the truth, her days were full enough that there was little of that.

She went out again with Lady Henrietta to other villages; she went riding each morning with Joshua or with her groom; she appealed to Lady Adelaide to begin teaching her her duties; and she entertained afternoon callers from among the local gentry. The most frequent of these were Lord Braverstoke and his son. They paid their first call two days after the last of the houseguests had departed, and Randall Braverstoke promptly reissued his invitation to take her aboard the
Golden Fleece.

The outing was arranged for the following day, so on Sunday, after services in the parish church just outside the castle walls, entered from the quadrangle through a fascinating stone tunnel that opened into the family’s private chapel, Adriana and Chalford found themselves aboard the
Golden Fleece
heading out into the Channel, while their host jauntily displayed his yacht’s amenities. His intention, rather amusingly clear, was to impress Chalford with the superiority of his sloop over all other sloops harbored on the south coast. Chalford responded politely.

Adriana responded cordially, even at times with enthusiasm, but privately she believed that the
Sea Dragon,
though smaller, was indeed the prettier and more graceful of the two, and was kept, sprats notwithstanding, in much better trim. She detected dry wood in several places on Braverstoke’s yacht, and although the brasses and the ostentatious gilded medallions that decked the bulwarks at evenly spaced intervals had been polished, the task had clearly been performed in haste. She enjoyed the expedition, but she made no attempt to beguile Mr. Braverstoke into repeating the invitation.

She enjoyed her outings with Chalford, too, and her time with Lady Henrietta, for whom she was rapidly developing a firm affection; however, she could not say that her sessions with Lady Adelaide were altogether successful.

“It is not that she does not wish to instruct me,” she confided to Lady Henrietta on Monday morning as they walked together toward Burmarsh, her ladyship having determined to visit Mary Flack in order to decipher the list she had previously been given. “She is very kind, but I cannot help but feel that she believes I should do much better to leave everything to her. And the woeful truth of it is,” she confessed with a rueful grin, “that I should like that very well.”

“She does not mean to give that impression,” Lady Hetta said, turning to smile at her and tugging her hat lower over her forehead in order to protect her eyes from the glare of the sun. “Indeed, she is pleased to have you here, my dear, as are we all. Perhaps she only thinks it better for you to do as you please for a time until you are quite settled in.”

“Well, she didn’t wish me to come with you today. She said it was not becoming to my station.”

“Only because we chose to walk,” said Lady Hetta. “She scolded me for inviting you, but really it is too bad to take a carriage round and about, when the path across the marsh is but two miles or so. And after last night’s rain, the road is in a dreadful state. The carriage would be a sight when we returned.”

“We won’t look so well ourselves,” Adriana pointed out, laughing. “I don’t know whose boots these are that Nancy unearthed for me, but they are certainly better for walking along this muddy path than any shoes of mine would be.”

“They are Chalford’s. Oh, yes,” she said when Adriana’s eyes widened in disbelief. “He was only a boy when he wore them, of course, but I daresay nothing has ever been thrown away here. Your Nancy appealed to my woman, you see, so I know. That hooded woolen cloak she found for you is an old one of Adelaide’s.”

They walked along in companionable silence for some moments after that, enjoying the calls of the birds in nearby hedges and trees. The path twisting across the marsh was one of those convoluted routes described to her by Chalford, and Adriana was having a fine time imagining a line of men and horses laden with brandy kegs in the dead of night, creeping along this very way, silent, ears cocked for the slightest sound in the distance that might herald the approach of riding officer or dragoon. The wind would be moaning through the willows nearby, shaking the leaves on the great hornbeam under which they were passing, moaning …

“Good gracious, what’s that?” she exclaimed as the sound penetrated at last, wrenching her from her reverie.

Lady Hetta, aroused from a brown study of her own, looked about, blinking. When the sound came again, she pointed. “Over there, beyond that hedge.”

But Adriana had already turned from the path. The ground away from the hard-packed trail, thanks to the previous night’s deluge, was boggy beneath her feet, but it was not so much so that it hindered her progress as she pushed through the hedge to discover a man, bound and gagged and tangled in the lower branches of the large bush under which he had been shoved.

“Mr. Petticrow!” exclaimed Lady Hetta, jerking her full skirts free of the hedge and rushing to kneel at his side, unconscious of the damage to her clothing. “Dear me, sir, how come you to be in such a dreadful fix?”

“Perhaps if you were to loosen his gag,” Adriana suggested, adding when this had been accomplished, “Dear sir, I hope you may not have caught your death.” She added her efforts to those of Lady Henrietta, and when the poor gentleman was free of his bindings, they assisted him to his feet.

“Thank you both very kindly,” said Mr. Petticrow, who could now be seen to be a man of medium height and somewhat portly stature with light-blue eyes and ruddy cheeks. He began to move his arms and legs carefully, then to stamp his feet. “Stiff as a stick, and not to be wondered at,” he said.

“Have you been there all night, Mr. Petticrow?” asked Lady Henrietta. “Are you not very wet?”

“A trifle dampish, thank you, your ladyship, but it didn’t come on to rain until after I was stowed, and the bush protected me from the worst of it, I believe. Not that those damned scoundrels—I do beg your pardon, I’m sure, but I find I am a trifle out of temper in consequence of this affront. They’d no intention of providing me shelter by shoving me under there. Meant me to perish unnoticed, that’s what they meant by it.”

“Oh, surely not,” protested Adriana. “Who would do such a dreadful thing?”

“Those dam—dashed smugglers, that’s who, ma’am. Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” he added with a quaint, though stiff, little bow. “Jeremiah Petticrow at your service.”

“This is Lady Chalford, Mr. Petticrow,” said Lady Hetta.