Cynthia Bailey Pratt (11 page)

The two girls entered the kitchen. “No, I’m not tired in the least,” Helena answered, reaching for an apron. “And I promised to help you with supper.”

“You needn’t do that!” Jocelyn’s tone was sharper than she intended, but how was she to slip away to see Hammond if Helena cooked with her? “We’re only having boiled beef. Again.”

“Oh? Don’t you get tired of that? I do, by now.” Helena looked in the pantry. “I have a better idea. I will make a quiche. You have everything I need.”

“What is that?” Jocelyn wanted to know, having never before heard the term.

“Very like the delicious salmon pie you made last week. It doesn’t take as long, though. If I must say so myself, I make it very well.”

She shushed Jocelyn’s protest. “I insist. My brother does praise my meals. I shall not mind going over to tend to him. I myself do not trust Mrs. Penhurst to cook.”

Helena sighed and Jocelyn understood. All Libermore knew that Mrs. Penhurst liked to take a drop or two of liquor now and then. “I wonder what she’ll burn this week. You know about the parlor curtains. Poof!” Helena threw up her hands in a typically French gesture. “It was painful to lose them when we worked so hard.”

Turning aside from that subject, Helena took out the ingredients she needed, ignoring Jocelyn, from whom protests still escaped like little puffs of steam from a teakettle. “I’m not going to be an extra burden on you. Now, agree.”

Jocelyn had forgotten how pleasant it was to have competent cheerful help in the kitchen. With a last glance toward the ceiling, she said, “I wouldn’t dream of arguing. What can I do?”

After dinner, while Helena threw away the dirty water from the dishes, Jocelyn filled a clean plate with Helena’s carefully cooked meal. The pie resembled her own but was much tastier, to Jocelyn’s mind, than the food she herself made. The boys seemed to think so, too, judging from the way their initial suspicions turned to blissful chewing.

Jocelyn set the plate down in her room and carried her candle to look for Hammond along the hall. Not knowing where he was, she stopped to look in each chamber.

He was on his knees in Arnold’s room, his head under the bed. Jocelyn said in astonishment, “Whatever are you doing?”

The look he turned on her was nearly savage. “I’m looking for that coat.”

“Why? I told you it isn’t here.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t check?” From under the bed Hammond dragged out a blue coat so furred and dusty, it looked as if it had been hidden there since Charles I sat the throne. The coat bore decorations of dried mud. Hammond shook it in his fist. Several moths, disturbed from their dinner, flew up toward Jocelyn’s candle.

“That’s not the right one,” Jocelyn said. Hammond snorted in disbelief. “That’s Arnold’s Sunday coat which he’d said he misplaced. He was probably afraid of getting into trouble if he brought it in so mired. Give it to me. I’ll prove it.”

Jocelyn set the candle on Arnold’s desk. She took the coat from Hammond. Tossing it around her shoulders, she wriggled into the sleeves. They were much too short, and the coat came nowhere near to closing across her front. Then she sneezed from the accumulated dust.

“God bless you,” Hammond said grudgingly.

She tried to take it off and became stuck, one arm akimbo and the other pulled in tight to her body. Jocelyn looked at Hammond and laughed at her predicament. Unsmiling, Hammond helped her out of the binding coat, his fingers brushing down her arm. He held the coat at arm’s length, frowning at it.

Ridiculously happy, for she felt his hand pause for an instant when he touched her, Jocelyn said, “Boot it under the bed again. I’ll pretend to discover it the next time I clean up here. He’s supposed to keep his room tidied himself, but what boy would?”

Hammond, his face tight, said, “I cannot take your unsupported word for what has happened to that coat.’’

“Then search all you like, Mr. Hammond. But carefully. Goodness knows what other horrors you’ll find under Arnold’s bed.” When she took up the candle, however, he followed her from the room.

She could imagine what Mrs. Swann, so chary of reputations, would say about Jocelyn entertaining a man alone in a bedroom. However, not even the sternest critic could find fault when the young lady stood looking out the window while the man hungrily devoured a meal. Jocelyn looked down into the sunset-streaked evening, thinking.

“Thank you,” Hammond said at last. “The food at the inn was poor, and I can’t think when I last tasted good French cooking.”

“You’ve just come from France?” Jocelyn said, taking the plate from his hands.

Hammond’s eyes hardened. “How did you know that?”

She quoted, with a blush, “Damn Frenchies never do clean their knives. ...”

“I must have been far gone to let out so much,” he murmured. He gave her a sidelong glance, his dark eyes narrow as he studied her. She was reminded of those tense moments beside the shed in the dark alley. Almost to himself he said, “I’m in a position where I don’t know who is trustworthy. Knowing what I do of you . . . your quickness of mind, your resourcefulness ... I’d like to believe that you are, but how can I be sure?”

“You can trust me,” she said, her heart in her words.

“Can I? Can I? I wonder.”

“Well,” she said, retreating. “I trust you.”

For a moment Hammond said nothing. Then he sighed. Jocelyn knew he’d made up his mind against her. “Besides, it’s too messy a business,” he said. “I can’t in good conscience ... Do you have a horse?”

“I beg your pardon?” She wondered whether, if in addition to the scrape along the ribs, he’d struck his head.

“More than anything, I need a horse.”

“My aunt and uncle took the only horses we have.”

Hammond frowned. Then his expression lightened. “I supposed Fain might have some sort of an animal?” He grinned and then chuckled. Jocelyn had never imagined him laughing. Her own lips could not resist curling up in response to this unexpected merriment.

“Yes, he keeps a mare, but—”

“Then I shall ‘borrow’ it. That’s poetic justice, if only you knew it.”

“But if you’d only explain . . .” Jocelyn began. “What’s so important about a boy’s blue coat?”

“I hid something in the lining. A letter. It means my whole future. I can’t tell you any more.” Hammond stepped close to her once more. “It’s vital that no one else know about me.”

“Who would believe me? But you can’t borrow the vicar’s horse—”

“But I can,” he said, with an echo of his smile.

“Because it’s lame. It bruised a foot when he went to Barwith.”

“Barwith? That’s by the sea.”

“Yes, he went there last week. He missed the service last Sunday because he couldn’t get back without taking the post.”

“I don’t for a moment believe his horse is lame. He more than likely had business in Barwith. Dirty business.”

“What do you mean by these references about the vicar? Helena Fain is my dearest friend, and you can’t go about saying disparaging things about her brother without even telling me why!”

“I can’t tell you,” he said. “I’d rather like to, but it’s not safe. I can tell you ... I can tell you I am working for our government.”

“The government?” About the only men she could think of who could make that claim were Constable Regin and the magistrate, Sir Edgar Baintree. They each went about their appointed duties with such a stolidity and attention to the rules that she could not for an instant imagine that Hammond had anything in common with government. “In what capacity?” she demanded.

Once again Hammond smiled, a slow half-hidden expression as though he were sourly amused at something she would not understand. “I’m a spy,” he said.

“A what!” The plain earthenware plate dropped from Jocelyn’s hands and broke into pieces on the floor. They both stooped to pick them up. Jocelyn gathered them into a fold in her apron as she stood up. Her head was whirling with half-remembered history lessons about intrigues at the court of Queen Elizabeth and Charles II hiding in oak trees.

“I’m a spy,” he said again in an undertone. “Not the most honorable profession, but I’ve done my best and will do it still. Will you help me? Will you trust me?”

“I . . .” She could not help but recall how she’d helped before. Then, too, she’d had her doubts, but she’d put them aside. That had been a private matter. Now he suggested the importance of his work. Whether she believed him or not, she could do no less than she’d done already. She did not have to like it.

“I will help you,” she said. The flickering candlelight made her eyes huge, sparkling with tiny flames. There were small curls clinging to her forehead and cheeks.

For reasons which he did not himself understand, Hammond said, “I hope I didn’t hurt your arm when I was angry before.”

“No,” Jocelyn said shortly. “If you’ll trust me a little, you’ll have no more need to roam the house. I don’t know how you’ve avoided the boys this long. You’ll be safe enough here until you want to go. I’m always the last to retire.”

“What about the servants?”

“There aren’t any. Only Mr. Quigg, the gardener, and he doesn’t sleep in the house.”

“You care for this house, your cousins, all by yourself?” He looked at her hands, a little red and swollen with the shiny mark of an old burn on the right thumb. The apron about her slender body was stained, not by uncleanliness but by old stains that would never come out.

Jocelyn said, “Sometimes we have a housekeeper.”

“But surely you must have a maid or . . .”It had been a long time since he thought about the finer details of managing an estate. For a moment he felt as if he really had come home, as if this were indeed England, and not merely another square on Napoleon’s map of future conquests.

From below they heard a shout and a slamming door. Quickly Jocelyn said, “You’d better close the door. It won’t be long before you can slip away. I’ll just go down now.”

In the hall Jocelyn leaned against the wall to catch her breath. Thinking of the look in Hammond’s eyes when he’d praised her, Jocelyn felt more alive than she had ever felt before. Not even Harry Yalter’s son ever looked at her so. She wondered if this was how it felt to be kissed—breathless, warm, and thoroughly confused.

No man had ever paid much attention to her, except for a friend of Tom’s who had visited the Luckems’ two summers ago for one month. His attentions to her had not been marked though he expressed a warm admiration for her. But an admirable wife would not help a man with his way to make in the world half so well as a rich or well-connected one. Unacknowledged by her father’s family and with no fortune, she was not surprised, nor even hurt, when Tom’s friend left without declaring himself.

Though it was never discussed, she always assumed she’d take care of her aunt and uncle’s house and sons until . . . surely there’d always be a place for her with her cousins’ families. An old-maid aunt, accustomed to household tasks, could hardly be an unwelcome addition to a household, especially after the children started coming. Jocelyn thought of a succession of little Arnolds and shuddered.

Perhaps this bleak picture of her future accounted for her strong feelings toward Hammond. He gave off an air of adventure missing from any foreseeable life she would ever know. Perhaps it was merely that he was so different from the other men in her life, sober fellows, with well-defined places in society.

Jocelyn dismissed that idea.

When she was with Hammond, she felt as her garden must feel in spring. Everything in her bloomed.

Happier than she’d ever been before, Jocelyn went downstairs, only to hesitate at seeing Helena there. What had Hammond meant about Mr. Fain? He’d seemed worried about the vicar being in the house.

Helena raised her eyebrows at her friend’s bringing down broken crockery from upstairs. “I wouldn’t think you’d let the boys eat in their rooms,” she said.

As Jocelyn dumped the broken pieces into a sack, trying to think of something in answer, Mr. Quigg opened the door, pitchfork in hand, and said, “Miss, miss! That there Cocker’s comin’ here again, miss!”

Helena gasped and said in disbelief, “Coming here?”

Mr. Quigg said, “Do you want me t’run him off, then?”

Jocelyn inhaled deeply. “No, Mr. Quigg. I’ll speak to him.” The gardener went out, weapon at the ready. Jocelyn put her hand on her friend’s arm. “What is it?”

Helena shook her head and licked her lips. “I hoped I shouldn’t see him after I came to you. I ... I lied to you earlier. He does say things . . . terrible things to me. He gives me nightmares.”

“Then he has spoken to you as he has spoken to me.”

“To you? Did he dare to pass comments on ... your physical . . . endowments?” Helena colored deeply.

To hearten her friend, Jocelyn said smilingly, “I’m afraid I haven’t many ‘endowments’ to be commented upon.” An answering curve came into Helena’s lips, only to be wiped away by Jocelyn continuing gravely, “But yes. Cocker has made suggestions to me both disgusting and impossible to consider seriously.”

“I was afraid I’d done something to encourage him,” Helena said with rising anger.

“I believe he’d make such comments to any unprotected female. We, however, needn’t toke any notice of him. Try to put it out of your mind, Helena, as I have.” Jocelyn went to the kitchen door.

“Oh, be careful,” Helena warned. “I am so afraid of him. His reputation for violence—”

“You stay here. I’ll manage
Mister
Cocker.”

“No, I’ll help you.” Her face hardened with resolution, Helena followed Jocelyn outside.

Hammond crept down the small stair beside the fireplace and walked across the stone floor, not allowing his bootheels to make the slightest noise. He pushed out the shutter an inch past the kitchen window to observe if it was safe to go out. The tiny streak of light, he knew, would not be noticeable, and his shadow stood beside him.

In the yard the evening light lingered, like a girl reluctant to leave her lover. Clouds ran across the sky, and Hammond wondered where he could take shelter against the night. His ribs still ached, and he felt somehow that sleeping in the damp wasn’t going to help. He left the inn as soon as he was able to walk without falling down. Soon he’d leave here as well and be once again on his way to Oxford to obtain, by fair means or foul, the jacket that held the key to his future.