Burning Bright (Brambridge Novel 2) (3 page)

It was like stitching a sail cloth, a spongy sail cloth. There was resistance at first until the needle entered the skin, then a short free slide, until resistance again as the needle came back out through the skin on the other side. Twenty times her needle entered and then came out, creating ten small uneven black cross shapes marching across Tommy’s shoulder. On the last stitch, she fumbled at the hessian material that lay on the floor beside her with her free hand and withdrew the small silver knife.

Peggy gave a small scream. “What are you going to do to him now?”

“I’m just going to cut the cotton, and then that will be the last stitch.”

Clenching her teeth, Harriet doubled over the cotton and pulled the blade through the strands. It only took one cut. The knife cut through like butter.

Her knife dropped to the floor with a clatter. With a wince, she rose slowly; she had knelt on the cold floor for so long her feet had gone to sleep.

“Thanks, lass.” Tommy rolled his head to one side and gazed blearily at her. Peggy clucked around him as they pulled the wounded man to his feet. He touched his shoulder in wonderment. “You should bring her with you, Bill,” he said weakly. “We could do with someone like her when we sail.”

“Over my dead body.” Agatha got to her feet. She picked up the small bottle of brandy that still contained a few drops of amber liquid and pushed it into Bill’s hand. “Now go, before anyone catches you.”

“What can we do to thank you?” Tommy’s voice was weak.

Harriet gazed at Bill as he towered over the smaller, more grizzled outline of the old sailor. Light-headedness rushed through her and her lips twitched with a sudden urge to giggle.

They would both be perfect.

“What can you do for me? Be at the village school on Wednesday afternoon at four o’clock.” Harriet turned and rummaged in the heavy bag that she had brought home from the school earlier. Selecting two leaflets from the sheaf of papers, she handed one to Bill and the other to Tommy, who took it in his good hand. “And wear something courtly.”

Bill stared down at the leaflet. “Mercutio enters stage right?” He looked back up at Harriet. “Surely you jest?”

Harriet folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. “That is what you can do for me, otherwise…”

“We’ll do it,” Tommy said leaning his head on Bill’s shoulder. “I’ve always wanted to be a count.” He smiled weakly at Harriet, and patted his sniffing wife gently on the back.

Bill said nothing, but tipped his head towards Harriet. Swinging Tommy’s unwounded arm over his massive shoulder, he supported the man through the door and into the gale.

Harriet’s urge to laugh left her as quickly as it had arrived. She ran to the door. “Wait… Bill. Is
he
coming back?”

Bill stopped in the lee of the front door and turned his head as Tommy leaned on him. “James, you mean? Because of—”

“Yes.”

Bill grinned. “He’s already back. Been in Brambridge two days I hear.” The door banged as he turned back into the gale and drew a limp Tommy out into the pouring rain.

Gracious.
Harriet brought a hand to her mouth.

The man on the horse
. Her hand fell to her side in a clenched fist. Turning on her heel, she faced the closed door that shut out the darkness outside. Her eyes flicked guiltily to an oblong item that sat on the floor by her feet and then resolutely back to the door. Without hesitation, she opened the door and strode into the night. There were a few choice words she had to say to that man. She had waited two years.

CHAPTER 2

As he did in every new place that he visited, Lord James Aloysius Oswald Stanton searched the night sky for the position of the stars. It was merely habit; here he knew the landscape like the back of his hand, every lush field and every overgrown track. He did not need to know which way was east or west. Sat high on his horse, he was no longer hiding in a haystack in the unforgiving arid land of the Portuguese peninsular, nor wading through deep rivers to avoid detection. James was back in Brambridge and had been for two long and boring days.

His hand crept to his waistband where two letters were tucked in a pouch. There was no point in pulling them out and reading them again. He knew their essence by heart.

Your last mission is to find out who is disrupting the spy routes through Brambridge, yours, Hawk.

We regret to inform that your father has died. As the new Lord Stanton we ask that you join us for the reading of the will at Brambridge Manor. Yours sincerely, Edward Granger.

James flexed his fingers and picked up the reins again. Scorpius, the large black stallion, snickered softly and stamped a great hoof. He had found Scorpius, red-eyed and foaming, on the battlefield at Badajoz, his rider dead, hanging from the saddle. He had had no time to retrieve the man’s body. Instead he had unhooked the soldier from the stirrups and left him among the dead.

James patted Scorpius’ flank absently. Any human feeling James had had was fleeting, and had been so since the day he left Brambridge.

Damn the Hawk and damn his father.

He stared at the shadowy fields around him but saw nothing. He had been happy enough to return to England, to London at the end of the war. His friend Freddie, Lord Lassiter, had given him a room to stay in. He had filled his days visiting the Greenwich observatory and attending meetings of the Astronomical Society. But after a few weeks, even the gentle pull of the stars could not change the indefinable knowledge that something was missing. The
danger
that had gone out of his life.

James focused on the horizon. A small light blinked out in Longman’s Cove, breaking the darkness. It danced briefly, and then all was dark again. He shook his head and let out a breath.

Squeezing his knees, he pushed Scorpius into a trot down the dark lane.
That
had been the good news, his father dying, although he was intrigued as to why he had been summoned to Brambridge Manor. At least his last mission had coincided nicely with it. And that was what it was. His last mission. If the Hawk asked him to do anything more again he would refuse.

James’ hands tightened on the reins and his stomach tightened. On the morrow the will would be read. And then he would be free. Free to burn the family portraits and paint his blasted father’s study a disgusting shade of yellow. Only
then
he would turn his full attention to Hawk’s request.

Scorpius pulled gently at his bit as James set him down the hill of Fountain Vale that led into Brambridge village. Two days he had been in Brambridge and he had not visited the Manor. He had not corresponded with his mother or sister since the night he had left. The Fountain Inn provided him with the hospitality that he needed; there would be time enough to see them in the morning.

James straightened in his saddle and kicked Scorpius into a canter. After another hundred yards, he arrived at the outskirts of Brambridge. A row of cottages led down to the Fountain Inn, and then further down the hill was a church with an enormous clock tower, a farm, blacksmiths, bakery, vicarage, and another inn, the Prince of Wales.

In contrast to the cottages that nestled into the landscape, the Fountain Inn hunkered down on the hillside, glowering with a hat of thatch and small eyes made of windows. Tethering Scorpius to the rail at the front, he made sure that he had plenty of water in the horse trough. Giving the great horse a last rub behind the ear, he looked up at the Inn. Gods he needed his bed.

But a clear, well-modulated voice rang round the yard as James strode to the door.

“Two days, and you have yet to visit us at the school house, Lord Stanton.”

Twisting round and down into a crouch, James searched the yard for the owner of the voice. “To whom am I addressing myself?” he asked, flicking his gaze from the stable to the outhouse.

A small figure as straight as a rake stepped from the shadows, a cloak around its shoulders, hair pinned back in a neat bun. “The mistress of Brambridge School.”

Straightening, James cleared his throat. She provided no threat. “Let me assure you that I take my responsibilities very carefully Miss… eh, Miss…”

But the shadowy figure did not supply her name.

“I understand you to have been in Brambridge for at least two days. What can have been more important than the well-being of your villagers?” Her tone was starchy.

James had had enough of this buttoned up madam. It was none of her business what he had been doing. Turning his back, he began to walk back towards the door.

Suddenly his boot caught; his other foot flailed in the air mid-step. For a few moments he teetered on his heel and then fell to the ground, landing hard on the seat of his breeches.

“You said you would come back for me!” The former imperious tones were now shot with frustration.

A shadow crossed the ground where he lay. He was still trying to catch his breath when another sharp pain skewered his shins.

“Ow, ow, ow.” 

The small shadow jigged up and down, coming to a stop by the horse trough.

James clutched at his leg. Bloody pikes and pennants. Surely he was the one that should have been doing all the exclaiming?

“Oooh.” The muttering continued. “Should have known that Mr. High and Mighty Stanton would be wearing armored boots. Why didn’t I stop to put on my own boots? Damn these buckle shoes.”

“That’s Lord Stanton, thank you,” James corrected angrily. He had managed to brave the Peninsular only to be felled in the middle of his home village by someone tripping him up and kicking him hard in the shins. He sat up and looked harder at the schoolmistress who rested against the trough clutching her foot. Her cloak had fallen aside to reveal a distinctly feminine figure with eye-catching curves. He stared with admiration as a sudden clearing of the clouds cast moonlight on flawless skin and a tightly bound bun of red hair.

“Harriet?” he said in disbelief.

“Oh,
Lord
High and Mighty Stanton knows me now, does he?” The diminutive figure turned and put her foot gingerly on the ground.

James shook his head.
Harriet
was the Brambridge school mistress? “It’s a bit hard to identify someone when you are lying on the floor.”

“Two years.”

“What?”

“You said you would come back for me, and it’s been two years.”

“When did I say that to you?” James got up from the floor slowly, and brushed off his breeches.

“When you left me at the bottom of the mine at the cliff’s edge. Two years ago.”

“Well, you obviously didn’t stand there for two years waiting.”

Harriet let out a huff of obvious frustration. “That is not the point. You said you would come back for me. That you always did.”

James frowned. “Harriet, I was accused of murder by my own father. I had to escape. It wasn’t safe to come back. This wasn’t just the playful scrapes of our childhood.”

Harriet gave an obvious shudder. “I’ve never regarded it as a scrape… the tide…” She stopped and looked at him. “I could have helped you.”

James shook his head. “You help me? And how would you have done that?”

Harriet wilted visibly. “I don’t know, but I would have tried. We looked out for each other.”

“As far as I can remember, I looked out for you.”

“Humph. Still—”

James had had enough. The wound in his shoulder had started hurting when he fell. “I’m sorry, Harriet. I must go. I have a meeting.”

“In the inn?” The disbelief in Harriet’s voice was palpable. The tones of an experienced schoolmistress shone through in the sparse words.

“Yes.”

“Oh. One of
those
meetings.” The derision in Harriet’s voice was palpable. “Well Lord Stanton-who-said-he-would-come-back-but-didn’t, I will leave you in peace.”

Harriet turned and stomped out of the yard.

James shook his head. He felt as if he was eight-years-old, but despite himself he
almost
smiled. He couldn’t believe how she had grown up. The way her hair was an even more brilliant shade of red, and the flare of her hips in that dress… and yet she still had the temper of a virago, and the dramatic flair of a Covent Garden performer. The outside coating of a confined schoolmistress heightened her attraction.

James groaned. He had avoided women all season in London and it was obviously beginning to affect him. He needed a drink. Devil take it, Harriet had been like a little sister to him.

The taproom of the inn fell quiet as he strode in. James looked around the room, blinking away the smoke from the fire. It was as if nothing had changed, the same old grizzled men sat hunched in the corner nursing their ale. He pushed his way towards the back of the room where the portly inn keeper eyed him warily from behind the bar. “What be you wantin’ sir?” he asked, running a cloth over a tankard.

“A pint of your best ale. I need it.”

“Certainly, sir,” the man murmured. “And be it awlright if I might know whom I might be addressing?”

James looked at him suspiciously. The man was new, he hadn’t been there in the past two days and his words sounded like sarcasm. But he carried himself like the owner of the inn. Had he been recognized? The war years had not been kind to him, but Harriet had certainly known him, in the dark no less. But in the two days he had been in Brambridge, no one else had addressed him by his real name.

Killer Lord
. That’s what the ton had called him in London at the balls. He’d stopped attending the gatherings. It was one thing to know what he was, yet another to have it flung in his face.

“Jim Lucky,” he said firmly. It was the name he’d been given in the army when he had refused to give his real name at enlisting. Despite the fact that Lord Anglethorpe had quietly dropped the murder charges a while ago due to lack of evidence, he was still wary of the reception he might receive from the village.

The man now looked back at him with narrowed eyes. “Ah and I s'pose your friends be called John Smith, sir?”