A Sister's Secret (35 page)

A figure appeared, a sturdy figure in coat, breeches and leather leggings, striding up from the parkland that the house overlooked. Captain Burnside emerged from the wood and walked to intercept him. The man, spotting him, checked for a moment, then came on. They met in the fading twilight, their feet in lush grass.

‘Good evening, sir,’ said Captain Burnside, and from under bushy grey eyebrows, Caroline’s steward, John Forbes, regarded him in grave enquiry.

‘You’ve the advantage of me, sir,’ he said, a Sussex burr to his voice.

‘Well, no, I haven’t,’ smiled the captain, ‘for as much as you don’t know me, I’ve not the foggiest notion who you are.’

‘I’d say whoever you are, sir, you’re on private land.’

‘I don’t dispute it, for it belongs to Lady Clarence Percival, who prefers to be known as Lady Caroline.’

‘It does,’ said John Forbes, economical of speech but a loyal and efficient steward. ‘My name is Forbes. I’m steward to the estate.’

The captain nodded and smiled, showing a countenance as pleasant and open as the most honest of men. ‘I’m a friend,’ he said.

‘That’s as may be,’ said Mr Forbes.

‘Be assured.’

‘It doesn’t suffice.’

‘Quite so,’ said the captain, taking no offence.

‘Her Ladyship’s friends don’t appear out of a wood,’ said Mr Forbes, ‘but present themselves at her front door. When she’s here, which she’s not at the moment.’

‘Well, it’s circumstances, d’you see.’

‘No, sir, I don’t see,’ said Mr Forbes, standing up square of shoulders to the lean-looking stranger.

‘I’ve called,’ said the captain, ‘to enquire if you’ve had any visitors today.’

Mr Forbes could not deny the openness of the man. But he still asked, ‘Why?’

‘Favour me, Mr Forbes, by believing I ask on behalf of Her Ladyship,’ said the captain, and the steward looked him in the eye.

‘We’ve had no visitors,’ he said.

‘None?’

‘None. Save you, sir.’

‘Thank you, Mr Forbes, I’m obliged. Goodnight to you.’

The twilight was dusky as the captain made his way back through the wood towards the fields and paths. Midway through the wood, he checked as he heard a rustling sound a little way behind him and to his right. He turned but saw no one. He went on, took a bend in the woodland
path and turned off it to lose himself among trees. From there, a few moments later, he heard the rustling sound again, faint but perceptible. He waited. He thought of masked men. The rustling increased, as if someone had begun to hurry. He supposed himself to be the quarry, a quarry that had disappeared. A shadowy figure flitted through the gloom. He pounced, and Caroline emitted a startled gasp as an arm whipped around her waist from behind and pinned her.

Captain Burnside, as surprised as she was startled, said, ‘God’s life, it’s you. May the angels forgive you for hazarding yourself so recklessly.’

‘Forgive me? Me? Let me go, sir!’ Caroline turned inside the encircling arm, and this put her for a brief moment in his embrace. The momentary closeness brought a sense of devastating weakness to her. Then his arm dropped away and he stepped back, looking dark and forbidding in the dusk. ‘Sir,’ she said huskily, ‘I am appalled you could fall on me like a footpad. Shame on you.’

Because of many things, Captain Burnside could not rid himself of thoughts of those masked horsemen and the conviction they boded no good for Lady Caroline and Annabelle. He was, however, prepared to believe he may have exaggerated the dangers, and there was the thankful fact that the manor house had received no enquiring visitors. Even so, he was not in approval of Lady Caroline’s excursion.

‘Madam,’ he said sternly, ‘you should not have left the cottage.’

‘Madam?’ she breathed in affront. ‘Madam? I am to be addressed as if I were being served in a shop?’

‘It was foolish of you to wander.’

‘Sir, you are taking my breath with your impudence. I will not be addressed as if what you are and what I am are
the other way about. I left the cottage, yes, but so did you.’

‘My excursion was for a purpose.’

Caroline could barely believe her ears. He was actually daring to show sternness and disapproval. Oh, the gall of the monster. ‘I declare you out of all conceit, Captain Burnside, if you think you can make one rule for yourself and another for me. What are you about in taking on such objectionable airs? And what were you about in going to meet my steward?’ Caroline was carrying the fight to the opposition, and, let it be said, with no lack of fire. ‘Do not think to give me the lie, sir, for I saw you. I might have shown myself, but did not, because you wished our presence here to go unnoticed. What of your presence? Is that to be advertised to one and all?’

‘I did not arrange to meet your steward, nor did I know who he was until I spoke with him.’ Captain Burnside, much to her vexation, was still disapproving. ‘I thought to discover if Cumberland had sent anyone to enquire if you were in residence with Annabelle. Fortunately, the answer was no.’

‘Oh, I will come at you with both fists in a moment, I surely will,’ breathed Caroline. ‘I will not be spoken to in such a surly way, nor looked at so crossly. Sammy advised me you had gone walking. I confess I followed you, for the things you do sometimes make me uneasy.’

‘You lack trust in me?’

‘I lack being consulted,’ said Caroline. ‘You go here, you go there, you do this and you do that, and all without ever confiding your purposes to me. Yes, you may well mutter, you may well stand on shifty feet, but that won’t help you escape the shame of knowing you have unfairly bullied me.’

‘Angels of light,’ declared the captain, ‘was there ever such a punishing patron?’

‘I am minded, sir, to send you packing,’ she said. The advancing dusk was bringing dark patches to the wood, but she was in no hurry to curtail this cut-and-thrust. She knew no man who provoked her tongue more than he did. It enlivened their every dialogue. ‘Why are you looking askance? Am I showing my petticoats again?’

‘It’s my contention, marm, that pretty petticoats ain’t to be regarded lightly – especially yours.’ He delivered this ridiculous comment with such gravity that she could not help her sudden little rush of laughter.

‘You are singularly absurd,’ she said, ‘but my temper is sweet again. Please escort me back.’

‘Willingly,’ he said, ‘or darkness will catch us.’

They walked together, emerging from the wood on to a field path.

‘I think you must be wrong about Cumberland,’ she said.

‘True, I might be, but recommend you still lie low for a few days.’

‘Very well.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘Your widowed mother, Captain Burnside, are you a sympathetic son to her?’

‘My mother?’ he said.

‘Your widowed mother. How often do you visit her, and where does she live?’

‘Oh, I visit her from time to time in her grace-and-favour lodging in Winchester.’

‘I know Winchester,’ said Caroline. ‘A lovely city. When you arrive in your mother’s presence, do you wish you could show her an honest face?’

‘Good God,’ said Captain Burnside, listening to the whisper and rustle of her garments.

‘Do not take God’s name in order to dissemble, sir, but answer me,’ said Caroline, her thoughts taking a positive turn.

‘My mother, dear lady, has never mentioned I arrive looking dishonest.’

‘Perhaps because you’ve an exceptional talent for hiding your deviousness,’ said Caroline. ‘Annabelle failed to remark your true self, and so you have won her over. She is in love with you, is she not?’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I am now due for the whole of my fee?’

Caroline’s intoxication with their exchanges received a sobering drench of cold water. ‘How petty you are, sir. Is Annabelle in love with you?’

‘She ain’t said so, Your Ladyship.’

Caroline made an impatient gesture. The sky was darkening fast, and the scarcely visible quarter-moon began to acquire shape and light.

‘Apart from the professional self-satisfaction you feel whenever you entrap trusting innocence, I presume it is all one to you whether Annabelle or any woman is in love with you?’ she said.

‘Well, it don’t do to let my feelings get in the way of my earning ability,’ said the captain reasonably.

‘Really, Captain Burnside, to indulge your predilection for knavery at the expense of becoming a human being is a deplorable thing in any man. You will not always show presentable and personable, not always find it easy to dupe young women.’

‘Faith, I know it,’ said the captain, ‘and can only hope a rich heiress will come my way and solve all my problems.’

‘You have said that before, or something like it,’ said Caroline. ‘I could have wished—’

‘The stile, Your Ladyship, there’s no gateway.’

They had reached the only exit through a hedgerow.

‘I am quite aware of the lie of the land hereabouts,’ said Caroline. ‘Kindly precede me, sir, and keep your back turned.’ The captain negotiated the stile with the ease of
an active man, and waited for Caroline to follow, his back to her. There were the most telling whispers of silks and lace brushing feminine limbs. A questing fox barked. A young vixen responded in her startlingly strangled and suffering way, and Captain Burnside turned involuntarily to lend Caroline what kind of helping hand was necessary. None was necessary. Neither fox nor vixen had startled the resilient young widow from South Carolina. She was in perfect negotiation of the stile, presenting a picture of bewitchment, not helplessness. Lace glimmered, legs glimmered, and silk-covered ankles shone. She stepped down. Her hands let go. Skirts floated and fell into place.

‘Delightful,’ said the unabashed captain.

‘You are speaking of my athleticism?’ enquired Caroline coolly.

‘Oh, that as well, marm.’

Exactly how could one deal with so specious a rogue? ‘Continue walking, sir,’ she said, ‘for I do not wish to give Annabelle or Mr Carter any wrong impressions about us. I was going to say I could have wished someone might have saved you from yourself in the years before you took up a life of duplicity and perfidy. How sad your mother must be that you have chosen to live by your wits instead of exercising yourself in a worthier way. She the widow of a man of God, and you his son – oh, my heart goes out to her.’

‘Don’t distress yourself, marm: she ain’t a woman to hold me in too much dismay, nor quote the Lord at me.’

‘Then her Christian tolerance is much to be admired,’ said Caroline, thinking about Winchester, sixty miles from Lewes, and about Captain Burnside’s absence tomorrow.

The captain departed well before dawn the following morning, Sammy driving him in the coach to Lewes, where he caught the six o’clock stage to London.

Over breakfast in the cottage, Caroline and Annabelle discussed the possibility of going to church. Jonathan stepped in to say it couldn’t be done, for on no account were they to show themselves to people.

‘Mr Carter, you are as absurd as Captain Burnside,’ said Caroline. ‘He has allowed his opinion of the Duke of Cumberland to exaggerate his fears of what the duke might do. Although my own opinion equates with his, I have not allowed it to affect either my common sense or my intuition. And my intuition shares with my common sense a certainty that Cumberland would not dare to do us any harm.’ If her intuition served her well in her certainty, Captain Burnside’s suspicions had served him equally well. Erzburger, acting for his master,
had
contemplated means of ensuring silence. Cumberland had called it off, thereby putting Caroline’s intuition in credit. ‘However,’ she went on, ‘since there is still a very faint chance that Captain Burnside is right, and I am wrong, we will continue for the moment to be discreet. We will stay away from church.’

‘I’m much obliged,’ said Jonathan, and Caroline gave him the sweetest smile.

Not long after breakfast, she called to him from the little landing. Going up, he found her at the open door of her bedroom.

She pointed at the casement window. ‘Look,’ she said, and Jonathan entered the room and crossed quickly to the window.

Caroline at once shut him in by closing the door and locking it from the outside. She hastened down the stairs, where she was joined by Annabelle, who helped
her into her cloak. They darted from the cottage, and Sammy, hearing a call, brought the coach round from the stables. Sammy was a willing accomplice, for in his eyes Lady Caroline could do no wrong, and he had secreted a travelling trunk aboard the coach thirty minutes ago. The sisters entered the vehicle.

‘Winchester, Sammy,’ said Lady Caroline.

‘Yes, Your Ladyship, and relying on a change of hosses at Petworth. Yes’m?’

‘Yes, away you go, Sammy, and no dawdling.’

Sammy whipped up the four and went. Jonathan, head out of the casement window, gave a shout of outrage. Annabelle laughed in triumph.

‘What sweet bliss, Caroline, we have done the creature down.’

Betsy waited in barely concealed impatience outside the Theatre Royal in the Hay Market. There were not too many people about on this warm Sunday morning, and Betsy scanned each new face in the hope of alighting on the countenance of her exciting gentleman friend. She was dressed in the lightest and thinnest gown of pink taffeta, having purchased it in a fit of delicious extravagance, extracting the necessary money from her precious hoard. Her summer bonnet was a matching pink. She wore no underskirt or petticoat, and filmy white pantaloons were a faint, gossamer blur beneath the light taffeta. She – or they – had already caught the eye of passing gentlemen, but Betsy, faithful to her own special gentleman for the day, prettily turned her nose up at all of them from under her parasol.

He appeared, clad in blue coat, blue trousers and a dashing top hat. He was not there one moment, he was before her the next.

Betsy glowed. ‘Oh, sir, you be nigh on almost late.’

‘I am late, my poppet. My stage was a lumbering ancient. But there you are, and looking, I see, as pretty as a posy of June rosebuds.’

‘Oh, I be fair set to swoon with ravishing excitement, sir, you speak so lovingly to me. Where will you take me for pleasuring?’