An Unsuitable Bride (21 page)

Alex heaved a sigh of relief. She had been half afraid that Sylvia and Matty would have already retired for the night, although it was barely seven. They tended to keep the same country hours as other folk in the village, following the sun’s path. She rode around to the back of the cottage and tethered Sally in a lean-to at the bottom of the kitchen garden. She stroked the pony’s nose. “I’ll bed you down in a little while, Sally.” Then she set off up the path.

The kitchen door was unlocked, as it always was. No one feared intruders in this out-of-the-way spot. She pushed it open and stepped into the kitchen, listening, torn between the desire to surprise her sister and the fear that such a surprise might startle Sylvia too much.

She called softly, “Anyone at home?”

The door to the front hall flew open. “Lord-a-mercy, Mistress Alex.” Matty threw up her hands, her plump face wreathed in smiles. “Oh, dearie me, what are you doing in those clothes? What do you look like? Your poor mother would have an attack of the vapors.”

“No she wouldn’t, Matty. Mama has never had an attack of the vapors in her life,” Alex declared, flinging her arms around her erstwhile nurse.

“Alex, dearest, ’tis really you. Oh, I’ve missed you so much.” Sylvia flew across the kitchen, arms outstretched, and hugged her sister tightly. Then she stood back, gazing at Alex’s costume with a worried frown. It had been agreed between them that Alex would only wear the boy’s costume if she had to run from an untenable situation. “What has happened, Alex? Why are you wearing the escape disguise?”

“Because I needed to escape from my escort,” Alex told her. “Now, don’t look so alarmed, Sylvia. ’Tis nothing serious, but I needed to give him the slip. He’s taken on the role of jailer, for some reason.”

“Jailer?” Sylvia shook her head. “Come, you must tell me everything.” She seized Alex’s hand and dragged her into the sitting room next door. “Who
is
this man?
Why didn’t you give me his name in your letter? D’you know how frustrating it is for me, just sitting on the sidelines trying to read between the lines of your letters?”

“Oh, don’t scold, darling. I will tell everything I can up to this moment.” Alex sat down beside her sister on the broad seat in the lighted front window, their arms intertwined, and began her tale.

Peregrine’s livery hack was fresh and trotted along without complaint as the evening shadows drew in. He had hoped that perhaps he would catch up with Alexandra, but he saw no sign of her on the lanes and guessed that she had indeed headed cross-country. The wide, open heath studded with gorse bushes and lush ferns stretched on either side as he reached the gibbet crossroads. The gibbet hung still and empty as the moon rose, casting a bright light across the heath. A hunting owl swooped low over the ground and dived suddenly, rising again with a small rabbit in its talons.

There was no sign at all of human habitation, and Peregrine began to regret his impulse until the lane took him at last into a small hamlet, cottages on either side of the lane.

The cottages all had small, well-cultivated gardens, giving the hamlet a prosperous air. The buildings, most with thatched roofs, seemed in good repair.

He rode the length of the village, looking for some
sign of Alexandra’s arrival. What he expected to find he didn’t know, until he reached the last cottage, almost on the outskirts of the village and slightly larger than the others. Two figures were outlined in one of the front windows, heads bent, arms encircling each other. One of them was Alexandra. She no longer wore the woolen cap, and the rich, glowing chestnut of her hair pinned in a topknot was unmistakable in the lamplight. He drew back out of sight of the window. Now was not the moment to announce his presence.

He took a lane that led him around the back of the cottage, where he found the piebald pony she had hired from the livery stable, tethered beneath a lean-to at the rear of a small kitchen garden.

Peregrine nodded to himself and continued along the lane that would lead him back to the beginning of the village and the road back to Lymington. He would return in the morning.

Sylvia listened to her sister’s tale in a mixture of outrage and disbelief. “This Sullivan man has really taken it upon himself to force himself upon you? How dare he? What possible justification does he have for it?”

“Simple curiosity, I suspect,” Alex said with a wry headshake. She couldn’t bring herself to confess, even to Sylvia, the powerful but mortifying muddle of feelings she had for Peregrine or the fact that they were clearly reciprocated. “The man has an inquiring mind,
and he doesn’t care for puzzles. Unfortunately, I showed him one, and he can’t let it go unsolved.”

Sylvia frowned. “That’s no excuse.”

Alex sighed. “Maybe not, but the fault is mine in the first place. I can’t think why I would jeopardize everything so stupidly.”

“Alex, you cannot blame yourself. The strain of keeping up the charade day after day must be unendurable. I don’t blame you in the least. And it was the middle of the night, after all.”

“Mmm,” she agreed, but without much conviction.

“Now, girls, I’ve made you both a nice hot posset, with plenty of nutmeg, as I know you like.” Matty interrupted their tête-à-tête, setting two fragrantly steaming pewter tankards down on the hearth. “ ’Tis time you were in bed. I’ve bedded down that pony, given ’er a good feed of hay. You look dead on your feet, Mistress Alex, and what you’re doin’ in those dreadful clothes I can’t imagine. You’ll put on your own good dress in the morning. Your clothes are all in the linen press, and I fetched a nice muslin down to the kitchen fire to air. I’ll bring it up to you in the morning.”

“Thank you, Matty. I own it will be good to look like myself, even if ’tis only for a few hours.” Alex slid off the window seat and curled up on the rag rug in front of the fire, taking up her tankard of brandy-spiced milk. “It smells good, Matty. Have the Gentlemen made a delivery recently?”

Matty put a finger to her lips and shook her head.
“Now, now, Mistress Alex, you know we don’t talk of such things.”

Alex chuckled and sipped her drink. The smuggling trade was a lively one in the villages and towns along the south coast. Christchurch was a particular stronghold, as the entrance to the harbor was narrow, guarded by Hengistbury Head, and difficult for the coast-guard cutters to penetrate. The locals enjoyed the fruits of the trade and kept their mouths shut. Bottles of wine and brandy, bales of delicate lace and French muslins appeared mysteriously in barns overnight, and not a word was spoken.

Sylvia was sitting on a low cushioned stool beside Alex and sipped her own posset appreciatively. “I did see them pass one night, when I couldn’t sleep. But I hid behind the curtain. You always said ’twas bad luck to see the Gentlemen, Matty.”

“Aye, and so ’tis.” Matty tutted. “But I should have spared my breath to cool my porridge, all the notice you girls ever took.”

Alex felt the last threads of tension leave her. If she closed her eyes, she could be back in the nursery, which Matty had continued to occupy even when her charges had graduated to their own bedchambers downstairs. Alex and Sylvia would spend many hours there, particularly when their mother was away on one of her frolics and Sir Arthur had retreated to his library. The atmosphere in the house then was so oppressive, and Matty’s domain was one spot of warmth in a frigid
land, where the servants crept around, whispering behind their hands. Matty would have no gossip in her haven, and whatever she thought of her employer’s errant wife, no one ever discovered.

Sylvia yawned and drank the last drop of her posset. “Come to bed, Alex. You’ve been on the road since dawn. Matty’s right, you look dead on your feet.”

Alex couldn’t remember when she had last been able to sleep without anxiety. The prospect of the morning had haunted her nights, so that she frequently woke at Combe Abbey feeling as if she hadn’t closed her eyes at all. But the wonderful relaxation she felt now was going to ensure that she fell into a black pit of unconsciousness.

Her own nightgown lay on the bed that she and Sylvia would share, and she picked it up, inhaling the scent of lavender in the soft cambric folds. Her nightgowns at Combe Abbey these days were of thick linen, all stiff, voluminous folds. The laundry maids would consider soft silks and lace-edged cambrics inappropriate for an impoverished librarian of indeterminate age.

She undressed quickly, dropped the nightgown over her head, and climbed into the high feather bed beside her sister. “Oh, what bliss.” She slipped down in the bed and turned on her side, pillowing her cheek on her hand. “Good night, Sylvia.”

“Good night, dearest.” Sylvia tucked the sheet around her sister’s shoulders and smiled as she realized that Alex was already asleep. She lay back against the pillows in
the flickering candlelight, wishing there was some way she could relieve Alex of some of the heavy burden she carried for them both.

Peregrine awoke in the Angel soon after dawn. He rang for hot water and coffee and dressed rapidly, filled with a sense of urgency and anticipation. He consumed a large breakfast in the private parlor, served by a rather sleepy maid, then went to the yard to fetch the livery’s hack, who had spent the night in one of the inn’s stalls. He decided to take the horse back to the livery stable himself, where the man he had spoken to the previous evening took his money with a laconic nod and led the horse away.

“A question for you?” Perry called after the man. “In the village, Barton, that is, d’you know who lives in the end cottage? ’Tis a little larger than the rest.”

“Reckon so.” The man nodded, still holding the horse’s bridle above the bit. “That’ll be Mistress Matty. Been ’ere for close on six years now, wi’ that poor invalid lady she takes care of. Mistress Sylvia, I believe. We don’t see much of ’er out an’ about. Weak ’eart, they say. But Mistress Matty’s a good woman. One of us, she is.” He nodded in decisive punctuation and led the horse into the stall.

Sylvia?
Peregrine remembered Alexandra’s slip the previous evening. She had started a word but cut herself off. Perhaps this Sylvia was the sister she didn’t
want to name. He returned to the Angel to collect Sam.

Taking the road to Barton in broad daylight was rather different from his previous journey. The heath didn’t seem so menacing when bathed in sunlight, and he passed donkey carts, riders, and men carrying pitchforks on the lane. The village itself was quiet. He passed a woman hanging washing under an apple tree in one of the front gardens and a group of small children carrying buckets from the well in the center of the village. The children stared in wide-eyed curiosity at the stranger on his handsome gray horse, rather as if he were some circus freak, Peregrine thought, smiling at them with what he hoped was reassurance. He doffed his hat to the woman hanging washing and pressed on down the lane to the last house.

A young woman was cutting big orange and yellow chrysanthemums in the front garden, laying them carefully in the trug she carried over her arm. When Peregrine drew rein at the gate, she straightened and turned, shading her eyes, although the sun was not that bright. A frown crossed her pale, pretty face, and she walked up the path towards him.