Betrayed Countess (Books We Love Historical Romance) (53 page)

Mr. Slate walked in. “I will be on my way now, ladies.” He’d stayed around to assist in the organizing. Bettina had given him a few mementos he said he’d be proud to accept.

“Enjoy your time with your daughter.” Bettina watched him stride out the front door to catch the post-chaise at the inn. She was sorry they couldn’t offer him a stipend for his last years. He was a dry little old man who’d always remained faithful to his employer.

“Bet he sleeps upside down in a closet,” Kerra said, and Maddie groaned.

Bettina muffled a laugh and wiped her sticky hands on her apron. “It looks like we are finished. Thank you again for your help, my friends.”

Bettina hugged the two women, her chest tight. To her, crying was a depleting emotion she could no longer afford. Still, everything seemed so absolute. By selling the estate she betrayed Everett.

In the dark shadows of evening, she kissed the children goodnight. Bettina asked Oleba to sit down with her on crates in the master chamber. “You are certain you want to travel with me? I cannot pay you much and there is no guarantee of anything in Louisiana.”

“I’m certain, don’t worry. How can I part from you and the little ones?” The maid’s smile etched a bright line in her dark, narrow face.

“I apologize for involving you when that awful Mr. Little
… the balcony, when you helped me. It is not something I am proud of, to have Frederick there….”

“We protected ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“
Mais oui
.” Bettina squeezed her hand in gratitude. “Now this house feels even more like a mausoleum, as empty as it is. I never thought I would regret abandoning Bronnmargh. But it is as if I am breaking my final link with Everett. Is it not silly to feel sentimental over a place I have never liked?”

Oleba clasped a hand over hers. “It will take you awhile to get over grieving for him. He was an exceptional man.”

Bettina stared over at the four-poster, where soon the retired admiral and his wife would sleep—the bed where she’d tasted passion and love. “I will never give up on him.”

* * * *

Bettina clicked the key in Bronnmargh’s front door. She gazed out at the sea, stepped down and climbed in the curricle with Oleba and the children. The meadow sweet scented the spring air with tangy mint. Rooks chirped in the eaves of the old manor. She recalled her first time here, nervous to meet the nefarious Mr. Camborne—a man, as it turned out, who hid his gentleness under a battered façade.

Bettina slapped the reins and drove down the hill behind the mismatched horses. Onyx snorted, still uneasy in the degradation of traces.

Mrs. Pollard rushed out and waved as they passed, then sniffed into her apron.

At the inn, where they’d spend their last night before catching the coach to Plymouth to board the ship, Bettina handed Maddie the keys.

“Give these to the new tenants.” Bettina was giving her the curricle, and Onyx and Shevall as well. “I know you will take good care of the horses.” She almost said, keep Onyx healthy for when Everett returns.

“I remember when Kerra brought you here. Raggedly little French girl with no knowledge o’ hard work.” Maddie flapped the key in her hand. Tears moistened her green eyes. “Tonight, I fixed a dinner with all the Cornish treats, so you won’t forget us.” She pointed to the laden table in the taproom just as Kerra and Charlie walked in from the kitchen with their daughter, Hester.

“How could I ever forget any of you?” With misty eyes, Bettina looked over the grateful pudding, meat pasties, curd puffs, saffron cake and star-gazy pie. Christian poked at the fish eyes in the last out of curiosity.

They sat down to eat in a rustle of clothes and clink of silverware.

“Hope you get past the French coast without no trouble. They’s been talk of invasion in south Cornwall.” Charlie swiped a coppery lock off his forehead. His resemblance to Stephen no longer bothered Bettina. So much had happened here on this wild coast.

“I thought the revolutionary army was a disorganized, ragtag group.” Frederick dished food onto his plate.

“Not no more. They’s been havin’ success beatin’ down the Austrians. Some new general, a Corsican, with a strange name—Bonapartee, or something—is winnin’ battles,” Charlie said.

“No talk o’ war.” Maddie thudded down a jug of ale on the table. “We’re celebratin’
… sort of. Sayin’ goodbye ain’t much to celebrate, but I’ll make the best o’ it.”

“Watch out for them Indians out there in America, now,” Charlie teased. “Don’t want to hear ’bout no French girl with an English accent losing her scalp to one of ’em.”

“Oh, Charlie, you be stoppin’ that.” Maddie slapped his shoulder. She took Hester from Kerra, sat her on her lap and spooned bits of pudding to her. The little girl had Kerra’s luminous green eyes and Charlie’s copper hair. “Sure will miss watching them little ones of yours growing up, out in that dangerous country.”

“Me too.” Kerra blew her nose into a handkerchief. “Ain’t fair, you goin’ to the other side of the world. Won’t never see you again, Mamsell.”

“What are Indians, Maman?” Christian asked, pie crumbs on his lips.

“I told you, the natives of America. They wear feathers and live in funny houses.” Bettina patted her boy on the head, smiling at his fascinated expression.

“And they throw tomahawks and shoot at Englishmen.” Frederick laughed, tickling his younger cousin. “I’m only teasing,” he said under Bettina’s warning look.

“Aye, off to America with the heathens,” Ann muttered as she plopped down a second jug of ale. “Good place for you. Another Godless country.” She returned to the kitchen.

“I am relieved that Ann will never change.” Bettina laughed as she held her squirming daughter. “I promise to write, to send word of us all.”

“Won’t be the same.” Maddie sighed, gazing with affection at Christian and Genevre. “But you darned sight better. And don’t take no scary chances in the wilderness.”

“I hope it is scary.” Frederick took a mouthful of saffron cake and rubbed a piece on Christian’s chin.

The almost four-year-old laughed with Everett’s wide mouth. Christian shook his head, his rich brown hair the color of his father’s, but his tumbled in unruly curls.

“Eat, eat!” Genevre, nearly a year old, soon had food all over her creamy, almost translucent skin. Her straight silky blonde hair was sticky with remnants.

“Mighty fine children. Kerra and me, now we’s working day and night to make a son of our own.” Charlie laughed when Kerra pinched his arm. “You Tregons women sure like to be givin’ a man a drubbin’.”

“Ain’t no one round here knows how to behave decent.” Just as Maddie spoke, Hester spit up a glob of pudding.

“Oops, Auntie, here’s a napkin.” Charlie tossed one to her, then turned a mischievous eye on Oleba. “Awful quiet there, Miss Oleba Refused. Now just where did you get that confounded name?”

“Not one speck of manners, none o’ you.” Maddie stood and carried the soiled baby into the kitchen. “Don’t hafta answer him, Miss Refused,” she called over her shoulder.

But Oleba looked unruffled and relayed the tale of her surname. “Now as for my proper name. Mama told me since Papa died before I was born, his elder brother said the name was her choice. When he asked Mama to name me after the birthing, Mama blurts something like, ‘oooh, Leba’. Leba means ‘fig tree’ where Mama came from, and she said my father liked figs. So Uncle says, ‘Oleba it is’. Afterwards he wouldn’t change it. You see, Refused was also his last name. So Mama said, alas, I’m harnessed with it.”

The group broke into laughter. Bettina kissed her daughter’s silky head, glad she could still laugh. She was anxious to immerse herself in other people’s stories to tamp down the melancholy of her own.

“My name means ‘dearer’,” Kerra said with another forlorn sniff. She hopped up and hugged her skinny arms around Bettina’s neck.

“You will always be ‘dearest’ to me.” Bettina kissed her friend’s tear-dampened cheek. She regretted leaving such close friends, but had to put this place behind her.

* * * *

Soon after cockcrow, Morley and Frederick loaded their trunks on the coach. Morley’s sword slapped against his bony leg in its makeshift leather strap of a scabbard.

Maddie swabbed her eyes and nose with a handkerchief. “Must be catching a cold. Kerra’d be here if Hester weren’t feverish today. Darned if I ain’t losing my other sister.” Maddie embraced Bettina, then straightened her hat and smoothed her hair. “You be sure to write and don’t never forget us, child. Here’s pasties for the journey an’ a flagon of lemonade. Be careful, please.”

Bettina inhaled Maddie’s scent of meat, onions, and love. “You and Kerra will always be special to me. You have meant so much, Maddie—a mother, a sister and a friend. You took me in when I needed all three.
Ma foi
, I cannot talk anymore….” Bettina coughed down her sorrow and climbed into the coach. Her smile tremulous, she waved goodbye to Maddie.

Cadan ran up the road to wave them off. “Send me a real Indian knife, Frederick,” he called.

“With real English blood on it!” Frederick cried, and Bettina poked him in the back.

“It would most likely be American blood,” Oleba said to him with her slow smile.

“Goodbye, Miss Maddie!” Christian called out the window as they pulled away. Genevre, restrained by Oleba, pouted and wouldn’t look at anyone.

Bettina threw one last glance up the hill to the rooftop of Bronnmargh and gritted her teeth. The hill blurred. In her memory a man on a black horse watched her, then galloped up the slope to the manor.

The rest of the familiar scenery passed in a haze as Bettina sank into the confines of her thoughts. She once feared she’d made a terrible mistake in coming to Cornwall. Now it seemed a home worthy of missing, as important as France once was. Did she make another blunder by leaving? Once she’d strived in England to find her mother, now she would travel to an untamed land for the same reason, but also to forge a new life. Fear of the journey ahead nagged at her. She hoped she’d find Maman, safe and well, and not experience danger in New Orleans.

She hugged an arm around her son and gazed over at her squirming daughter, determined to protect her children and always remember their father.

* * * *

The bustle of Plymouth barely registered as Bettina shuffled her group into the boat to be rowed out to the ship. She settled on the hard bench beside Frederick. Another passenger rustled a newspaper and the boy leaned over to read. Oleba held the children on the bench in front of them.

“Look, a report says the Admiralty admits insufficient actions due to war circumstances.” Frederick practically grabbed the paper. “Many English citizens taken from ships are rumored to be held as prisoners of war in French prisons.”

The man snatched the paper away.

“
Vraiment
?” Bettina sat up straighter, heart racing. She asked politely to read the article. “I knew there was a chance he was still alive.” Inside she always held on to that glimmer of belief.

She stared at the looming two-masted ship, then over her shoulder at the receding shore of England. Her fingers shook, as if she needed to grasp the land and stay here. Then she turned toward the ship again. She must continue. In the French enclave of New Orleans, she might find the help she needed.

The End

About the Author

Diane Parkinson (who writes as Diane Scott Lewis) grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, joined the Navy at nineteen and has written and edited free-lance since high school. She married in Greece and raised two sons in Puerto Rico, California, Guam and Virginia. She writes book reviews for the Historical Novels Review and has worked as an on-line book editor. Diane served as president of the Riverside Writers in 2007-2008. She published her first historical novel, The False Light, with Eternal Press in April 2010. Elysium was published in 2011, and the sequel to The False Light, Without Refuge, was released in March 2012. She lives with her husband and dachshund in Pennsylvania.

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