A Sister's Secret (40 page)

She stopped, and her hand flew to her throat. Oh, merciful heavens, it can’t be, it can’t be!

It was midnight, and the villages of England were asleep. Sussex lay quiet. Sammy, however, was awake. He was on a four-hour watch until two in the morning. Captain Burnside had spoken to him and Mr Carter, and Sammy had offered his services. He patrolled up and down, and round and about. The moon, a bright crescent, cast silver light. Captain Burnside had said that if any unpleasant characters turned up, it would probably be at a time when they might expect the occupants of the cottage to be asleep and unprepared. So Sammy, willing and conscientious, was keeping watch.

Caroline was also awake. She simply could not get to sleep, cosy though the room and the bed were. She was in emotional turmoil, the impossible making its claim on her mind and restlessness afflicting her body. At times she felt almost feverish. She knew herself to be physically healthy. Too healthy. It was nearly six years since she had denied Clarence access to her bed. Now her feelings appalled her. She wanted to, she needed to, lie in the arms of a man. Not any man. A particular man, a singular man, a man of such dubious activities that one could only pray for him.

In dreadful dismay at her longings, she turned on to her stomach, buried her face in the feather pillow and even bit on it. Oh, dear heaven, how wretchedly true it was, the weakness some women had for scoundrels and adventurers. Clarence had been a degenerate scoundrel, and Captain Burnside was a philandering adventurer. But she knew now why she had worried about him, why she had come to hate the thought of Annabelle in his arms, and why she had been so wishful to reform him.

She must conquer her weakness, she must. She did not doubt that, given the encouragement, he would marry her for her money and make her as unhappy in the end as Clarence had. She turned again and sat up, her silk nightgown slipping off her shoulders. She was thirsty. There was water in a large terracotta pot in the kitchen. The coolness of the container and its contents, crystal-clear spring water, drew her from the bed. On her bare feet she left the bedroom. Annabelle did not stir. The cottage was quiet, and filtering moonlight saw her safely down the narrow stairs. Her bare feet moved over the polished boards of the passage, and she entered the kitchen. There, a brass oil lamp gave light. She took a pewter drinking mug from the dresser, lifted the lid of the water vessel and dipped the mug. She drank deeply. The water still had a sweet, refreshing coolness to it.

‘Stay quite still, whoever you are – oh, ye gods, Caroline?’

She dropped the mug in startled fright. It fell with a splash into the container, the lid of which was still in her left hand. She turned. Captain Burnside, in shirt and breeches, regarded her like a man mesmerized. The light of the all-night lamp bathed her face, neck and shoulders. Her splendid body was a pale, shimmering shape amid the silken delicacy of her nightgown. She was as much mesmerized as he was, though her
limbs were trembling and her blood rushing, wayward and burning. She put a hand to her throat. Other than that, she could not move. And he, it seemed, could find none of his ready words.

She felt the lamplight was uncovering her. Her whole body trembled, causing the lightest of ripples to disturb her nightgown.

‘I – Captain Burnside, I beg you.’ Her voice was a strained huskiness.

He came to. He turned his glance aside from the revealing silk. ‘So sorry,’ he said, ‘but I was on the couch in the living room and heard a noise.’

‘Yes. I came down for water. I was dreadfully thirsty.’ Emotion shortened the lingering vowels of South Carolina. ‘I am sorry to have disturbed you. I did not know you had chosen to sleep in the living room.’

‘A precautionary measure, marm.’

Marm. That stupid appellation. So discouraging of friendship. Did he want nothing from her except, perhaps, her fortune? He even had his back to her now. It was true, because she felt the light was disrobing her, that she had made the plea of modesty. Now, made perverse by her wayward blood, she wanted him to look at her. No, what was she thinking of? There must be no encouragement, none, for if he touched as well as looked, she would lose her head.

With an effort, she said, ‘I do not think precautionary measures at all necessary – I think your fears and suspicions exaggerated.’

‘I am beginning to think so myself. But I’ll stay in the living room. Meanwhile, go back to bed.’ He was curt, brusque. He had never been so before. It should have helped her in her intention to conquer her weakness, but it was no help at all. It wounded her.

‘I will go when I will; I will not be told,’ she breathed, and still he kept his back to her.

‘Well, you are your own mistress,’ he said.

‘And you would always rather quarrel with me than not!’

He swung round, and it wounded her again, unbearably, to see how stiff and unyielding he was.

‘You are well aware,’ he said, ‘that I can’t command the privilege of either quarrelling with you or equating myself with you. If I—’ He broke off, his uncharacteristic harshness falling helplessly from him in the face of her revealing, night-clad splendour. She was wholly the woman, the white silk bestowing lustre to the visible glimmer of her body. The moment was fraught with impossibility in what it demanded of the man. It demanded the self-denial of a saint. What did it demand of the woman? A gesture that would save him from committing the unpardonable, a simple, quick retreat that would remove her from his eyes. But she made no gesture, none at all. She stood before him, as if compulsively inviting the unpardonable, her limbs trembling again. He made an effort by saying in a strained whisper, ‘God help you, Lady Caroline, and God help me too if you don’t go up to bed.’

Faintly she breathed, ‘Have you no affection—’

‘Cap’n Burnside?’ The momentous interruption came from outside the back door. It was Sammy’s voice.

Caroline gasped, and she did move then, just as the door began to open. She fled from the kitchen. Sammy looked in. He saw Captain Burnside.

‘Sammy?’ The captain forced himself out of his own emotional turmoil.

‘Oh, it ain’t no alarm bells, guv’nor, except there’s a tinker. Comes here reg’lar, he says, and sleeps in the
stables and gets fed in the mornings. I thought best you know, sir.’

‘Yes, best I do, Sammy, and I’ll come and inspect the gentleman.’

‘In case he ain’t a tinker?’ said Sammy. ‘Well, I ain’t seen one more like. Hairy as an old goat, he is, with a cart full of tin kettles and suchlike, and smelling of onions, guv’nor.’

Even so, Captain Burnside went to inspect the itinerant pedlar. Satisfied, he returned to the cottage. He retrieved the pewter mug from the water container. He took a drink himself, to ease the dryness of his throat. Images danced in the lamplight.

‘Here is the lid, Captain Burnside.’ The warm voice of South Carolina reached his startled ears. The voice was calmer, softer. Caroline was unable, quite unable, to go back to her bed without trying to ease the tension between herself and him.

‘Oh, my God,’ he breathed, and turned, expecting to see an irresistible vision again. But she had put her cloak on, and there was even a slight smile on her face. Her hair, unbound, was a tumbling, fiery cloud. In her hand was the lid of the terracotta container.

‘I am sorry,’ she said, and he had no idea how much it had cost her to reduce her emotions to a controllable level.

He took the lid from her and replaced it. ‘Sorry?’ he said.

‘I declare myself to be the one at fault,’ she said. ‘If either of us was quarrelsome, it was I. Please forgive me.’

His look was rueful, as if he felt her too beautiful for her own good, which she nearly had been. He chose a safe, self-calming rejoinder. ‘You aren’t at fault,’ he said. ‘By the way, you’ve a guest in your stables. A tinker. You’re
expected to supply him with breakfast. That, it seems, has been the custom.’

‘He need not fear we shall break it,’ she said. ‘What would England’s countryside be without its tinkers?’ Needing to re-establish the singular nature of their relationship, she went on lightly, ‘Are you sure he’s a tinker? Are you sure he isn’t Cumberland?’

Captain Burnside recognized her own kind of raillery. Much to her relief, he laughed. ‘Whatever else he might do, Cumberland ain’t the man to dress himself in a patched coat and ragged breeches that smell of onions, nor sport enough hair to stuff a pillow.’

Caroline’s responsive laugh was born of her relief. ‘When all is over, when Cumberland is no longer in fits at us for one reason or another, we – you and I – need not be such bad friends, do you think?’ she said, still keeping to a light note.

‘Assure you, I ain’t ever parted from any patron on unfriendly terms.’

‘You should not speak of parting from Annabelle and me.’

‘Your Ladyship—’

‘I won’t allow it. Nor will Annabelle.’ The challenging note was back. ‘And I am not Your Ladyship. I am your friend. I shall go back to my bed now.’

She went. Her resolve to keep herself at a distance from him, to fight her weakness, had had no more substance than a dry and withered straw.

The rest of the night was without incident. The morning brought clouds and a touch of humidity. Captain Burnside reflected on the possibility that Lady Caroline had not been wrong in her conviction that Cumberland, for all his majestic indifference to people, Parliament and certain
laws, would not go so far as to have her and Annabelle silenced by an act of murder. And why should he? It would be Annabelle’s word against his, and there was no certainty Annabelle would testify against him. Even if she did, she could not name her sister, or anyone else, as a witness. Her word would never stand up against Cumberland’s in the event of an official inquiry into incidents planned to take place on 29 July. And since those incidents were not going to be quite as planned, an inquiry was doubtful. Cumberland did not know that. But he did know Annabelle could never be as convincing as himself. Perhaps those masked horsemen had related in no way to Cumberland’s machinations.

Captain Burnside wondered if he had not made somewhat of a fool of himself, in which case he must blame his emotive weakness for overturning his reasoning. Wryly, he conceded a man in love was not a man of cold logic. His first thought, his only thought, had been to contrive the removal of Annabelle and Lady Caroline from the immediate reach of Cumberland.

He stopped pacing the garden and entered the kitchen by the back door. The aroma of frying ham had a delicious effect on his sense of smell. The large iron pan was on the stove. In it were sizzling slices of ham and thick round pats. Lady Caroline was turning the ham with a long frying fork. Her kitchen smock guarded her gown. Jonathan was making coffee. Annabelle entered from the living room, having just finished laying the table.

Captain Burnside gave Jonathan a testy look.

‘Don’t blame me,’ said Jonathan. ‘Her Ladyship had a stand-up with me, and I lost.’

‘It is my kitchen,’ said Caroline, who had decided her relationship with the captain was at its most enjoyable when she stood up for herself.

‘Jonathan,’ said the captain, ‘you’re required to see to it that Lady Caroline don’t wait on us.’

‘Well,’ said Jonathan, ‘I ain’t supposing—’

‘Captain Burnside,’ said Caroline, ‘kindly don’t interfere. Breakfast is almost ready and you may take your place at the table.’

‘Mercy me,’ said Annabelle, ‘we are going to have such a trying day, Charles. Caroline is in a haughty mood.’

Captain Burnside let a smile come and go. He peered at the contents of the frying pan. He took up a fork and poked one of the round pats. ‘What, may I ask, are these?’

‘Go away,’ said Caroline, and lightly rapped his knuckles with the frying fork. She had enjoyed a beautiful sleep after going back to bed, and she had woken with a feeling of sweet determination. Captain Burnside must be reformed. And he must be made to fall in love with her. She would not let emotion weaken her, but proceed calmly along the path to success, matching his impertinences in her own kind of way. ‘These are American browns,’ she said.

‘Potato pats,’ said Jonathan. The pats were crisply browning on either side.

‘There, ready,’ said Caroline. ‘Who is going to take breakfast to Sammy and the tinker?’ Plates sat warming on the stove. She filled the top one with ham and browns. Jonathan took it up. She filled another.

Jonathan offered both plates to Annabelle. ‘There, my girl, you take ’em while I finish making the coffee.’

Incensed, Annabelle cried, ‘Oh, I cannot believe this. Do you hear him, Charles? Do this, do that, and calling me girl … Where did you find such a coarse, common creature?’

‘Come, Miss Howard,’ said Jonathan briskly, ‘it ain’t much to ask.’

‘I shan’t, I won’t,’ said Annabelle. ‘Why, you beast, you know that Sammy says the tinker has fleas.’

‘I’ll take them,’ said Captain Burnside, and relieved Jonathan of the filled plates.

When he returned, the others were sitting at the table, breakfasts in front of them.

‘I will get yours, Charles,’ said Annabelle, and came to her feet in sweet willingness.

‘Captain Burnside is quite capable,’ said Caroline.

‘Yes, sit down, sweet girl,’ said the captain, and fetched his breakfast.

The ham was delicious, the crisp-sided potato pats equally so. Caroline accepted all compliments graciously.

‘After breakfast,’ she said, ‘we shall go to Great Wivenden.’

‘Shall we?’ asked Jonathan.

‘You need not come,’ said Annabelle, ‘you can help the tinker mend kettles and catch his fleas.’

‘That won’t do, he’ll pass them on to us,’ said the captain.

‘Oh, is there nothing the horrid varmint wouldn’t do to us?’ said Annabelle.

‘I ain’t any more partial to fleas than you, Miss Howard,’ said Jonathan, ‘though I dare say you’d be a plumper meal than I would.’

Annabelle gasped a muffled little shriek of outrage. ‘Oh, you all are lower than a snake!’ she cried.

‘Mr Carter, don’t tease her so,’ said Caroline.

‘Great Wivenden?’ mused Captain Burnside.