The Spinster and the Earl (3 page)

The coin was snatched up by the gambler, a local sheepherder, who brought it home. Upon hearing coins clanking in her husband’s pocket, the sheepherder’s wife plucked it out to pay the back taxes due on their small cottage. The king’s tax collector then passed it over to the regiment’s captain to buy supplies.

The captain in turn handed the coin over to his requisitions officer to buy new wool blankets for their horses. The officer took it and headed straight for Lady Beatrice’s booth to buy the best to be found. And since she could not refuse the English officer his request, she took the coin into her hand with a pasted smile on her face. Blasted coin! She would have to try again.

At accounting time, when she came home from market, there it sat on the very top of the stack. It gleamed up at her, the stamped letters shining magically on its face, mocking her efforts

“The devil take it!” she softly swore upon espying the coin. The servant, Ian, who was helping her load the wares onto the cart gave her a queer look.

“Where did this come from, Ian?”

“My mother brought it, my lady,” he said. “She wanted to pay you back for the help you gave when my sister’s baby was born. It was a miracle, the finding of it. She said she was scraping off mussels below the harbor wharf when it struck her on the head. Someone had tossed it away. Can you believe it, my lady? Why would anyone throw a gold coin away?”

She could not give him a reply, for she had been the one who’d tossed it. She held the coin in front of her face and said, much to the lad’s astonishment, a very bad word in Irish.

Angry, she spoke to the coin, “You little bugger you . . .
Imigh leat.
Clear off . . . ye’ll not get the better of me! I’ll be rid of you yet!” She would have melted the coin and given it away, but she was afraid of the uncertain power that lay within its golden form. Eventually, she grew weary of tossing, throwing, and spending it. The cursed item became a simple meddlesome trick played upon her by the wee folk. One she was unfortunately stuck with for the time being.

And the fey, she doubted not, were watching and having a jolly good laugh over her sudden bursts of colorful language.

*    *    *

It had been almost six Sundays since that fateful night when she’d found the magic coin at Drennan Castle. The old Earl of Drennan had died the next morning and she’d been stuck with that terrible bit of magic ever since.

She now crouched by the stone wall dividing her property from that of the late earl’s, taking steady aim at a plump grouse, the coin clanking noisily against her shot pouch.

“Faith, ’tis almost as irritating as using this useless bit o’ metal,” she said aloud, grimacing contemptuously down at the ancient flintlock she’d been forced to use for hunting. The ancient relic in her hands had been used in combat long ago, when her father, as a young man, had been a merchant sailor in his majesty’s service.

The flintlock had a long, narrow barrel, and a heavy, metal-tipped butt, which had served oftentimes as a club when the pistol was unloaded and required for immediate defense. The firing-arm was difficult to use, its weight heavy and cumbersome in her small feminine hands. Her father, Lord Patrick O’Brien, refused to entrust her with a decent weapon, ignored her pleadings by saying, “Ladies have no business handling weapons in the first place, lass. ’Tis dangerous to entrust one with one.”

To which she’d retorted tartly, “Then I won’t be one, Da. Treat me like you would any other young gentleman in your household.”

He’d heartily laughed, told her she was a scheming hellion, and sent her on her way with this ancient relic of a blunderbuss.

“The unfeeling rascal,” she mumbled as she re-loaded the pistol. Her father knew she would not be able to take a decent shot with this outdated bit of metal. It’d be a minor miracle if she hit anything.

She crouched now by the edge of a marsh. Mist rose up from the water, obscuring the landscape, which bordered the property of Drennan Castle and Brightwood Manor. Tall weeds hid her from view as she spotted another prey, a large, speckled pheasant, roosting but a few meters to her right in marsh reeds. It would be lovely to have some fresh game on the table tonight and this bird looked to be nice and plump, perfect for basting over a peat fire.

Taking careful aim over the musket, which had no sights, she fired.

To her amazement, the rusty hammer sprang forward the first time she pulled the trigger, igniting the flint in the powder pan and miraculously sparking to burst forth the shot with a smoking
ka-bang!
She felt the gun tremble as the musket ball cannoned out of the barrel. Her hand kicked backwards as the weapon sprang forward. Powder smoked the air around her, creating a cloudy haze.

“Oh, hell and damnation!” a deep male voice bellowed out into the mist as the frightened neighs of a startled thoroughbred peeled in the air.

She looked up in time to see a wall of shiny black horse flesh and spurred boots flash in front of her surprised eyes. Muttered angry curses could be heard over the horse’s panicked whinnies as both rider and steed galloped towards a nearby stone wall. Abruptly, the animal stopped, bolting away from the solid obstruction placed in its path.

The hapless rider, who’d miraculously been able to keep his seat till then, was effectively tossed, his mount kicking up its hooves at the obstruction. He, the unfortunate master, continued to sail over the stone impediment landing with a solid splash into a nearby bog.

“Merciful heavens!” She gasped, and ran to the edge of the pond where sat the thrown victim.

A stranger glared up at her. His dark blues eyes, the same sparkling shade as the marsh lake on a cold day, silently accusing her.

She stood as motionless as a statue, her pale, oval face unflinching at the sight of blood gushing down his leg. Her own green eyes, the color of the hills behind her, blinked back at him. Brushing aside long tendrils of black hair, which had escaped out from under her hunting hat, she observed him.

She made not the least sign of distress by either crying torrents of remorse, or attempting a delicate feminine swipe of the fevered brow. She merely lifted one of her dark, perfectly arched eyebrows and stared.

Although she wore a fetching hunting jacket of dark red wool, the same outfit, in fact, she’d ordered from Dublin with its matching tartan hat, she could tell by the stranger’s sour expression he thought her some sort of monstrous creature.

“Sir, are you well?” she dared to ask, trying to remain calm while her insides tumbled nervously about, secretly relieved to see that he was alive.

“No, the devil take it. I am not!” he spat out wincing. “
Demme
, my leg is throbbing dreadfully. And you, madam, are clearly some sort of half-witted, featherbrained female to think otherwise. Indeed, if I felt any worse, I’d no doubt be lying completely unconscious at your feet!”

“I better help you up, then,” she said, biting nervously down on her lower lip, while secretly dreading getting any closer to him. She knew from past experiences that the English were not a good-natured people. And this one apparently was not about to become an exception to the rule. And what would ordinarily have been a perfectly tranquil day of hunting was now ruined.

She sighed to herself as she drew closer. She knew immediately that her first assumptions about him were correct. He was indeed English. There was no question about his nationality. And just to make matters more disagreeable, undoubtedly some sort of well-titled English gentleman. A fact that clearly evinced itself by the well-clipped, cultured accent she’d heard when he spoke, and by his top-lofty manner towards her, his supposed inferior, an Irish gentlewoman.

His impeccable attire, although now thoroughly mud-stained, clung damply to his masculine form like a second skin. The tailoring of the riding outfit was evidently the workmanship of an expensive London tailor, such as Schweitzer and Davidson, or perhaps even that newcomer, Guthrie, she’d been reading about. Indeed, no good Irish tailor worth his name would have considered using such superfine material for a common riding jacket. A good Irish country tailor wisely knew that during a fast-paced canter across the damp, green hills, the suit would become irreparably soiled. “Why waste good material?” a tailor would argue with his clients. When good, sturdy wool and leather are plentiful on the isles, why not simply put them to good use?

Aye, she nodded. And this stranger’s clothes were better suited for the more sedate gentlemanly pleasures of a calm dry trot in a fashionable London park. Slim chance of a healthy mud-splattering there.

But it was not his stylish clothes, nor the fact that he was probably a powerfully titled Lord Somebody or Other, which troubled her. It was the manner in which his right leg sat at an unhealthy angle. It denoted a serious injury. He could, she knew, become permanently crippled from such a tumble if his leg were not properly tended.

“Do you intend to assist me, or are you planning on standing there awaiting this muck to bury me?” he asked with dry humor. “For if you must know, ’tis dreadfully wet and cold.” He indicated the bog, which surrounded him, raising one muddied hand for her inspection. “And as for its fragrant bouquet . . . well, I do believe only a swine would denote it as pleasant to the finer senses.”

He had not been gilding the truth, she decided moments later, her own pert nose wrinkling at the putrid smell of various decaying elements, which created the bog. Because he was by all accounts badly wounded, she waded in, not wishing to risk his catching some deadly wasting sickness brought on by a sudden inflammation of the lungs. She had enough laid at her doorstep as it was. She needed no further trouble, such an English nobleman becoming seriously ill, to add to it.

Carefully balancing herself with her
shillelagh
, a long, polished, walking stick made from the branch of an ancient oak tree, she checked the depths. It was not unknown for bogs to turn into unexpected deathtraps. Bogs often acted as sinkholes and many an unwary traveler was known to have been suddenly sucked down by them. Fortunately, the stranger had landed in a rather shallow one. There appeared to be no imminent danger of any unexpected sinking.

The long walking stick she used was one of her father’s making and she always took extra care to carry it with her when hunting. Never once had she imagined there’d come a day when she’d use it to wade into a bog to rescue a strange Englishman. Aye, if she’d had an inkling of what would occur to her this morning, she’d have stayed securely at home in her warm bed with Druscilla attending upon her with hot cups of fortifying tea.

She stood beside the fallen stranger and visibly swallowed. She found herself staring down at the lower half of his face. A red, puckered scar ran jaggedly down what would’ve undoubtedly been one of the handsomest faces she’d ever seen, if it hadn’t been so badly marred.

Guessing him to be in his late twenties, the English lord had sharp, broad lines for cheekbones and a fine high brow full of intelligence, which rose above startling, sapphire, blue eyes. But the puckering, white line running down one side of his face ruined the effect. An evident reminder of what, no doubt, had been a violent and most dangerous encounter. Unconsciously, half-afraid, she lowered her eyes protectively away.

“I see you’ve halted once more,” he drawled, his voice tinged with cool amusement. “Undoubtedly upon espying that little souvenir, which I’ve been branded with, you hesitate.” He gave a half-pained laugh, wincing as he did.

“’Tis really nothing to concern yourself, ma’am. A mere memento I picked up hastily on the Peninsula. A gift, one of his majesty’s own, a green-horned lieutenant gave me in the heat of battle. The swashbuckling jackanapes didn’t know how to wield his sword and struck me instead.”

“But . . . you’re English,” she said, protesting at the idea that he’d been harmed by one of his own countrymen. Only the enemy, she’d been taught, was capable of such wanton recklessness. For everyone knew that the French were a cold-hearted, bloodthirsty bunch of butchers. Not worthy to be called part of the brotherhood of men.

“Just so . . . you’d think he’d have taken greater care around his own kind, wouldn’t you? But alas, no. And as you can see being English made me just as vulnerable as any other man around a sharp swinging weapon,” he replied, dismissing the subject as of no further consequence.

“Now, if you’ll kindly give me your arm, I’d like to get out of this mud bath before it becomes the next Brighton fashion.”

Obediently, she stepped forward, leaning down with the support of the walking stick. She managed to pull him up into a half-standing position.

He towered a full hand above her. This astonished Beatrice. She was considered to be quite tall for a woman. Most of the men in the village were the same height or shorter than she. It was an enjoyable asset she took advantage of when bargaining and trading with them. She winced a little and looked up at him as he tightly gripped her shoulders.

He leaned heavily into her for support. She straightened her back, feeling his hard male body brush-up against her. She tried to put a little distance between them, but he clung tenaciously to her like a drowning man to a floating piece of buoyant driftwood. His scarred eye looked down at her with what she thought to be a glint of humor, as if he knew how the intimate contact of their two bodies meeting made her feel. However, when he took his first tentative step forward, he grimaced in genuine pain, hissing air between clenched teeth.

“Agggh. . . .” He breathed, cursing vehemently under his breath.

Raising her eyes heavenward, Beatrice chose to ignore the roasting language. She assisted him to a sitting position upon a clover bank and walked purposefully to her game bag. Removing a leather wine sack, she poured strong spirits over a sharp hunting knife. She moved towards him, a grim look of purpose tightening her mouth.

“Are you preparing to polish me off?” he asked sardonically, eyeing the sharp weapon in her hand. “You’re not some sort of Irish druid looking for a blood sacrifice, are you? I think I’ve already spilled enough today to satisfy even the most demanding of goddesses, don’t you agree, ma’am?”