Betrayed Countess (Books We Love Historical Romance) (6 page)

Kerra filled her flask. “Wish it were brandy. Gather some wood, we’ll start a fire.”

“Could we not find a cheap inn?” Bettina gathered dry leaves and twigs into a pile. “Anyone might come upon us here.”

“Nay, this will do fine. Needn’t waste no money.” Kerra plopped down the tinderbox, removed flint and steel, and drew a spark to light a cloth scrap. She tossed it into the tinder and stirred it around until it caught. Smokey flames crackled and sizzled.

This task always looked simple when others performed it. Bettina had seen the servants at home light many a fire, but never bothered to attempt it herself—not when someone always rushed to do it before she even needed to ask.

She sat on the hard ground, her buttocks already sore from the ride. The trees loomed around her, their branches like woody arms grasping above. She longed for a chamber pot to relieve herself, instead of crouching behind a trunk like an animal.

Kerra dropped potatoes and green beans into the pan with a dab of water. “Too bad meat’s so expensive. We shoulda bought some lard.” She half fried, half boiled the vegetables over the fire. She dipped the pan and plopped the mass into the plate.

“Eat your fill, then pass it to me, an’ I’ll eat mine.” Kerra shoved the plate at her.

Bettina had little appetite but managed two forkfuls. The mixture tasted bland without butter or salt, but it warmed her stomach. She’d watched Kerra shop at the open air market, and appreciated the skill it required to haggle over the prices.

“No, don’t wipe off the fork. You got a sickness I might catch?” Kerra took the plate and scooped right in. “Now me and Maddie, we practically raised ourselves. She’s seven years older
’an me. Was seventeen when she went to work at the inn—the best server they be gettin’.” She slurped another mouthful, food dribbling onto her chin. “Have you brothers or sisters?”

“No
… I am the only child.” Bettina sagged in more isolation. She shifted on the stony ground, listening to the evening sounds in the rare moments Kerra fell silent.

“Want more?” Kerra slopped another forkful into her mouth. “You didn’t eat much. Maddie won that inn in a card game, if you can imagine. The old coot who owned it, Mr. Whitecomb, he drunk and gamed himself to ruin.” Kerra stopped and belched.

“One evening, years later, Whitecomb tried to beat a man who took a fancy to Maddie. She is right comely, my sister. This stranger wanted her to join them playing Brag, what a mistake! Our father be sharp as knives with cards, taught Mads all he knew, when he was around. The stranger kept pushin’ the stakes higher. Old man Whitecomb got drunker. Bet all he had, then threw the inn on top. Were they ever bamboozled when Maddie had the winning hand. Oops, think there’s a crawler in here.” Kerra dug around in the pan, picked something out and flipped it aside. “Don’t look like it had legs.” She held out a forkful to Bettina. “Have another bite?”

“No, I assure you, you may finish it.” Bettina turned away, bile churning in her stomach. She pressed on her abdomen and thought of the liveried servants who once stood behind her chair, ready to execute her every wish. She prayed this journey—or aligning herself with a person of low character—wasn’t a horrible mistake. She swallowed down her nausea. “You say your sister won the card game?”

“That she did,” Kerra laughed. “Course she wouldn't o’ kept the inn, I don't think. She felt sorry for Whitecomb, the old ginsoaker. But he told her he were finished and up and left that night. We always thought he’d sober up and come back, but never did. So she renamed it after the ace that won it for her. Be the finest inn in the area, better ‘an the kiddleys in most villages—that’s your common drinkin’ place.”

The flames crackled before them, pungent smoke drifting upward. The firelight flickered and cast shadows across their faces. Bettina noticed that, at times, Kerra’s infectious smile and bright green eyes gave the illusion of beauty. “You have led an interesting life.”

“You do what you has to. What other choice be there?” Kerra put the plate down and shook out the blanket. Twilight faded over the trees, and the birds stopped their chirping.

Bettina hugged her shawl around her shoulders. “You are right. Often you do not have a choice. I have never met
… someone like you.” She’d never uttered sincerer words.

“Ain’t too many exactly like me, if the truth be told.” Kerra scooted closer to Bettina and offered her half the blanket. “So, what’s your story, Mamsell?”

“What do you mean, ‘my story’?” Bettina had grown used to Kerra’s mangling of mademoiselle, but now her weary senses tensed.

“A girl traveling in a country she don’t come from
… with no family, not a stitch o’ clothes ’cept what’s on her back. If I ain’t bein’ too personal?”

Bettina remembered her upset with Armand for not letting her pack extra clothes. She fell silent for a moment, deciding how best to reply. She fumbled to loosen the stays beneath her dress, trying to relax. “I would like not to talk about it
… if you do not mind.” Armand would have been proud of her discretion, but did she care any longer about the devious old man’s warnings?

Kerra made no comment for several minutes and Bettina felt a stab of guilt that she’d bruised her feelings. Then the young woman snuggled into the blanket, squeezing up against Bettina. “Suit yourself.”

Bettina stretched out on the ground and managed to grab a corner of the threadbare wool. She crumpled her bundle, now malleable sans papers, under her head and knew suiting herself had nothing to do with it. Armand had fooled her to convince her to leave France. But why?

Rustles in the bushes, the cracking of dried leaves caused by some prowling creature, and her own worries kept sleep elusive.

* * * *

The horse clopped over a stone bridge that crossed what Kerra called the Tamar River. Bettina shifted in the saddle to ease her bruised thighs and stretch her spine after three days of riding. Every inch of her body ached from sleeping on hard earth. The farther from Bath they got, the more she doubted her decision.

“See them broken chimneys? That’s from abandoned tin and copper mines.” Kerra described the engine sheds, wooden derricks, windlasses and wheel stamps—tracts of land pillaged for the minerals, now scarred and barren.

They passed a batch of rough-hewn dwellings lumped in a declivity in the land. A group of men stood around a communal fire. A chimney rose up out of a hillside nearby, a pump engine slogging in the background.

“Look at them, a bunch of tinners slacken off.” Kerra tapped Bettina’s shoulder from behind. “Tinners be our tin miners. We should invite ourselves down. They probably have beer or brandy. I’m dry and could use a tipple.”

Bettina cringed at this suggestion. Kerra’s unpredictable manner caught her off-guard. “No, we do not need to do that. We cannot approach strange men, it is dangerous.”

“Who says it’s dangerous?” Kerra’s voice grew petulant. “I don’t let nothing stand in my way for what I want.”

“That is why we were ‘asked’ to leave the coach.” Bettina reined in the horse, who immediately dropped its head to crop the sparse grass. “If you wish it, then you go down solitaire and I will wait here.”

Hearing a shout, Bettina looked across the rocky slope. A man tramped toward them from the group below. “Say, you girls all alone out here?” He smiled with fat lips nestled like worms in a scraggly beard.

“We’re headed down to Sidwell,” Kerra said, looking him over.

Bettina glared at her companion, her hand twisting the horse’s reins. She took in the man’s blue drill coat and trousers, damp and tinged with what looked like black powder.

“Can’t be too sure of bein’ safe all by yourselves. Ride down and rest a bit.”

“What might be in it for us?” Kerra made a sultry laugh, her neck stretching like a cat about to receive a saucer of milk.

“Kerra, we must continue our travels,” Bettina said through tight lips. She jerked the horse’s head up from his grazing, and he snorted in protest.

“A froggie she be? But she ain’t so friendly, if she’s pretty enough,” the man smirked and picked at his teeth. “We has whiskey to share. Come sit for a chat.”

“I wouldn’t mind…
.” Kerra broke off when Bettina nudged her with a sharp elbow.

“Leave us alone. We will have none of this ‘chat’.” Bettina figured it was some vulgar English alcohol.

“Running scared from your country, aye? Now I’m getting a mite riled, you bein’ such a killjoy.” The man’s fleshy smile changed to a sneer. He stepped closer. “You should be a bit more sweet to me.”

Another miner strolled up the slope toward them. They smelled like earth and smoke.

Bettina kicked the horse’s flanks, forcing Kerra to grab her shoulders. The horse galloped off down the road. Bettina leaned into it, her thighs tight against the gelding’s heaving body.

“Oh, bother with you, then!” The miner’s laugh followed after them.

“They wouldn’t o’ done much, but a friendly drink.” Kerra gasped, clinging to her with her skinny arms as they jostled. “All right. Slow down.”

“I will not be invited to sit with men I do not know. Or do not care to know.” Bettina pulled back on the reins, yet urged the horse along the road until Hawthorne trees blocked them from the miners’ sight. She was anxious to keep a semblance of decency in a life that had lost its composition—an unraveling tapestry.

“Now don’t get your back up, Mamsell. You’ve some airs for one boldly traipsing the world on her own. But if you don’t want to, I won’t ask again.” Kerra stopped squirming and slumped behind her. “Must o’ lived some high life where you come from.”

“My back is not up, and there is nothing high about my life.”
Not anymore
, Bettina thought with a heavy sigh. The horse stepped over a dirty stream and a scattering of fragrant meadowsweet with creamy white flowers. Bettina kept glancing over her shoulder. She let out a strained breath. “
Ma foi
, it is as you said, you do what you have to.”

* * * *

The Atlantic surged in gray anger on the western coast the next afternoon, waves bashing against jagged cliffs. Bettina dismounted to rest the horse. The sea spray dampened her cheeks, and she tasted salt in a breeze that ruffled her silk skirt around her legs and slapped at her straw hat. “So I have crossed England … and I am that much farther from France.” She stared down the sharp cliffs and had the cutting feeling she should gallop back in the other direction—except the poor horse might not live that long.

“We still has a few days to go down the coast
,” Kerra grimaced and kicked at the dirt. Bettina saw she was mistaken that her companion had stopped sulking over her missed opportunity for alcohol.

Riding southwest, they passed splintered slate cliffs and contrasting green hills, like broken pewter ware against jade cloth. Remnants of ancient castles and stonewalls clung to the landscape. Cream-colored sheep grazed peacefully on the slopes. Gulls screeched overhead, as they swept their long winged bodies out to sea. Bettina breathed it all in, trying not to dwell on her precarious future.

When night closed in, Kerra pointed out a circle of stones off the road. “Let’s make camp there, among them dancing maidens.”

“What are dancing maidens?” Bettina asked when the fire crackled and they’d eaten their supper. The upright stones cast long shadows over the scrubby grass. The wind twisted at her hair and she nestled in her shawl.

“Cornish lore. Any standing stones is maidens frozen in place for dancing on Sunday. God don’t like that, so he punished ’em.” Kerra snorted and tossed a twig into the fire.

“Perhaps you can unfreeze one and ask her to bring me a hot cup of coffee,” Bettina said, and found she liked it when Kerra laughed. She snuggled closer to the flames and appreciated
that with Kerra’s company she felt a part of something instead of abandoned. “You speak of your sister. Where are your parents?” She wanted to banish any thoughts of her own, and soothe the other woman’s injured pride.

“Well, Mamm died when I be born. Guess that made Father sad and fulla spite. ’Course he was one to wander
… couldn’t bear to look at us too much. Always searching for a game, Maddie says. Never gave us much money, ’cause he drunk it all. Then he took off for good, not once sending us nothing. But we got by.” Kerra laughed louder, a sound that seemed to swirl the stars poking out above. “Better off without him, most likely.”

“When this happened, it did not make you upset or angry?” Bettina asked in a reflective voice, tossing another stick on a fire that wriggled in the wind and flickered over the chastised dancers. She listened to every sound around her, praying that no one lurked out there in the dark to take advantage of two unprotected women. The ocean, several yards away, continued to batter the cliffs. The trees, in abundance at the start of their journey, now seemed sparse on this rugged, windswept shore. She shivered, as if the wind could scour through her skin.

“Sometimes. But why waste time on that? Only chews up your innards, not the one you be mad at.” Kerra lay back on the blanket, her arms behind her head. An owl hooted in the distance. “Mighta been huffed for being dumped from the coach, but not to let it fester for long.”