Earl on Fire

Chapter 3

Three

Like any worthy royal concubine, she was a warrior, for a king’s fealty could only be won by battling the certitude that goes hand in hand with unfettered power.

— The Concubine and Her King. Unpublished MS.

“Arrrgh!”

Susannah swung her scythe, and the slithering serpent-sorcerer hissed and died. She kept moving forward as hot, green blood burst out of the horrible thing.

“Arrrgh!”

Now she was clearing away the evil fiend’s minions who kept popping up to plague her.

“Arrrgh!”

Making the sound gave more strength to the slash of her scythe and helped her forget her arms and waist ached, her throat burned with thirst, her skin dripped with sweat.

She stopped, panting. She was near one of the ancient standing stones in the churchyard and might hit the scythe on the stone if she kept on.

She had worked too hard at sharpening the blade this morning to risk putting a nick in it now.

Yes, she was out of breath, but that was not the reason she needed to stop. Not at all.

She leaned the scythe against the stone and dropped to her knees and started cutting the clumps of grass with her sickle.

“Pardon, madam.”

It was an unfamiliar voice, cool and flat and clipped. She looked up and into brightness. She shaded her eyes with her hand, but, even with that and the brim of her bonnet, she couldn’t see anyone.

A tall figure moved and blocked the sun.

Still partly blinded, she could make out only the silhouette of a man. Tall, yes, but not outrageously so. Certainly not so tall as her brother Dando. Admirable shoulders and a tidy waist. A beaver in his hand at his side. She squinted and saw buff breeches, gleaming riding boots.

Again came the cool voice, the precise words. “I seek the parson. Or someone who can show me the church register.”

She stood, determined not to use the stone to help pull herself up. Oof. Every year, it was a little more difficult to get off the ground.

This was what she had to look forward to—a slow decline in her powers. It was funny how one started out getting stronger and more skillful with each passing year until there was some invisible turning point, and then one became weaker and weaker, less and less capable.

No, it wasn’t funny. But it wasn’t sad, either. It just was. The old had to make way for the young, and it did no good to resent becoming old.

Even though she wasn’t nearly done being young.

Susannah noticed then that the stranger with the beautiful boots and the admirable shoulders had extended a gloved hand to help her. How kind. But she was already up, so she shook her head and bobbed a curtsy and twisted her own filthy hands into her apron. She’d forgotten her gloves, as usual.

He tilted his head down in a small bow of acknowledgement, and she saw his hair was golden and unfashionably short.

But fashion might have chopped and changed in far-off places like London, and Susannah would have no way of knowing, not ever having been to London herself.

In Much Wemby, men still wore their hair long, perhaps not long enough for the queues of the last century, but still longish, curling around their ears, and her own brother’s hair was almost leonine in its fullness and length, touching his shoulders.

Perhaps Susannah should cut Dando’s hair shorter.

The man standing before her raised his cropped, golden head and replaced his beaver, and, as he did so, he revealed himself to be a startlingly handsome man of middle age.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

What else could one say when faced with a startlingly handsome man? She had no business being tongue-tied, having spent her whole life around Ned Greenway, but she was accustomed to Ned’s beauty, and this man’s handsomeness was new and . . . startling.

“The parson,” the man said.

“I . . .”

His blue eyes jinked around the churchyard, likely looking for some sensible person to come and rescue him. He had almost certainly decided she was simple, and she couldn’t blame him as she had done nothing to show him she wasn’t.

“No parson,” she blurted and started walking rapidly towards the far end of the churchyard. She beckoned at the man to follow her because what he would see there would explain things far better than she seemed able to do right now.

Where were her words?

He strode after her, and soon they reached the back side of what had once been the church. Here the gentleman—because he had to be a gentleman with those clothes, that way of speaking—could see the ruins, the toppled stones, everything open to the sky.

“There is no parson,” she said, once again out of breath.

He looked at the grass growing where the chancel had been. “Because there is no church.”

“No. Not for centuries. Sacked by a mob who hoped to find popish gold.”

She smiled, but he did not smile back, just examined her with those eyes of pale ice ringed by a darker blue.

His face had a stoniness to it, as if it had been hewn from a quarry.

But this gentleman must not always keep his face still because the marvelous expanse of his forehead had creases, so someone or something puzzled him from time to time.

Like her, he had gray in his hair, but his was confined to his temples while hers had completely obliterated her brown.

There were fine lines by his eyes and grooves by his well-shaped mouth with lips that were not too full, not too thin, but just right. And his nose . . .

His nose was delightful. Truly. It might be the best thing about his face because it was not the nose one expected of a gentleman.

It veered towards the blobby rather than the aristocratic.

It was a bit wide across the bridge and a bit crooked, and she immediately wanted to know what it would feel like to have the tip of it—that round softness—rubbing against her own nose or across her cheek.

Unbidden, her hand came up to her face, and she stroked her cheek.

He watched her hand. For a moment, it was as if they were both under a spell. Her touching her cheek, him watching her touch her cheek.

The spell was broken when the lines next to his eyes became deeper, darker, more obvious, and she realized he had winced. And he had almost certainly winced because her hand was crusted in dirt.

“Yark,” she yipped and scrubbed at her cheek with her sleeve since her apron was soiled from neck to hem.

He turned to survey the churchyard, giving her a moment of privacy.

“No church. No parson,” he said. “I suppose it’s too much to hope for a church register.”

She started to laugh, but his face held no trace of a smile. None. Had he made a joke? If so, what a dry mock, indeed.

He went on, “I was deceived by the intact wall at the front.”

“Oh, yes,” she said eagerly. “Did you see the elephant?”

But, of course, he must have. The elephant gargoyle was huge and strange, impossible to miss. One would have to be blind not to remark upon it. Certainly, he had seen it.

It was good Susannah answered her own question because the gentleman did not.

Instead, he said, “I was also fooled by the neatness of the churchyard. You must be the keeper’s wife.” He looked at her again.

Under his cool gaze, her head suddenly felt intolerably warm, so she fumbled at her bonnet ribbons with her grimy hands and took off her bonnet and fanned herself with it.

“No, no, no. I’m no one’s wife, and there’s no keeper. I cut the grass and pull the weeds because everyone else who ever knew the people buried here are also long dead themselves.”

“That makes you an unpaid keeper, Miss . . .”

“Beasley,” she said without hesitation. But then some queer pique took hold of her. He was a man who thought he deserved answers when he couldn’t even be bothered to ask questions.

She frowned at him. “Isn’t that how one could describe almost every woman in the world? An unpaid keeper of one kind or another?”

He had nothing to say to that. Very few people would. She saw his Adam’s apple go up and down.

“Then no one has been buried here for centuries,” he said.

Another non-question, but the words felt weighty, like a warning.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Was she mistaken, and this man was not an out-of-place gentleman but an official of some kind?

A churchyard inspector who was here to discover the grave, disinter the remains, and punish her with something much worse than being sent to Coventry.

He tilted his head to the side ever so slightly. “I don’t suppose you know the name Puddlewick.”

No, this was not what she had feared. Not at all. This man was trying to discover an entirely different secret.

“Puddle,” she swallowed, “wick?”

“Yes.”

She tried to adopt an uncaring, unconcerned attitude. “Why do you ask? What’s Puddlewick to you?”

She moved, put her body between him and the church because he might take it into his head to go into the ruins right this very instant and discover the stone carved with the letters PVDDLEWICK.

“I’m trying to find a Mr. Augustus Puddlewick,” he said.

Her heart was beating out of her chest. She felt dizzy. But still she tried to scoff.

“A ridiculous name.”

“Yes. It might well be a nom de guerre. A false name,” he said as if she could not possibly have any idea what a nom de guerre was unless he told her. He was not wrong. “But whatever his name, I’m almost certain he’s from these parts.”

“And what do you want with Mr. Puddlewick?”

“I want to pay him money to write a book.”

She gaped. “Money to write a book?”

“For my granddaughter.”

He was a grandfather. Which meant he was a husband and a father. Of course, most men were these things, just as most women were wives and mothers.

He said, “I don’t suppose you know of any authors who live in Much Wemby.”

Susannah didn’t. Not if she split geographical hairs. “In Much Wemby?” Her voice squeaked. “No.”

He looked at her as if he couldn’t decide what she was. Whether he should continue speaking to her or he should capture her as a freak of nature and put her on display.

Finally, he said, “I thank you for your time, Miss Beasley.”

He tipped his hat and bowed, but she didn’t want him to go just yet.

He reeked of danger because of his handsomeness and because he was trying to find Augustus, but she still didn’t want him to go.

He was something unlikely, and, for a long time, there hadn’t been anything unlikely in her life that hadn’t come out of her own head.

“Are you off to Much Wemby?” she babbled. “It’s just down the lane and beyond the bridge over the Wem. A third of a mile. Maybe a half.”

She could follow him there. She could clean up and go into Much Wemby and pretend to be in need of a packet of needles, and they might cross paths again.

The village would be looking at its best with everything being readied for tonight, and the gentleman might take luncheon at The Swan.

Sir John D’Oyly did that from time to time and had praised Celia’s pastry, said her pies were the best in the county.

But, no. Susannah should direct this gentleman to go away. Far away. For safety’s sake.

“Trimbleton is lovely, too, and I hear they do very good sausages at The Red Lion, and it’s in the opposite direction, only a few more miles, Mr. . . .”

Ha! She would use his own trick to get his name.

“Good day,” he said instead of his name.

The trick must only work for high-handed men who had plenty of experience in demanding things and getting them.

He walked away from her, and she admired his shoulders again as she replaced her bonnet and began to tie the ribbons.

“No, no, no, no,” she called after him when she saw where he was headed. She ran, ribbons flying, clamping her bonnet to her head with a dirty hand. “Don’t go through the lychgate. It’s old, and it sways in the wind, and it might come down around your ears.”

She’d never forgive herself if this man were to be crushed by the lychgate. He was so very good to look at.

“Here.” She led him to the place where some of the churchyard wall had crumbled.

He made another courtly bow and climbed through the gap elegantly. She didn’t even know one could climb through something elegantly.

She put a hand on one side of the gap and leaned out into the lane. He was walking towards Much Wemby.

“It’s that way!” She pointed the other direction. “Trimbleton! The Red Lion!”

He turned and nodded to show he’d heard her and raised his hand to his beaver in a salute, but then he continued on his way towards Much Wemby.

She had failed to send him away, but he was clearly a man who did what he wanted. She went back to the stone and her scythe.

Worry, worry, full of fury, blue-eyed man in a hurry.

Once upon a time, it had seemed incredibly important for no one to know about Augustus. Because of Father. Because of Ned. Because of everyone else in Much Wemby.

Hodge had argued with Susannah but finally agreed.

She stooped and picked up the sickle she had abandoned in the grass. There wasn’t any reason to feel frightened. Nothing was going to happen. Nothing ever happened in Much Wemby.

But she’d just had an adventure of sorts in what was left of Little Wemby, hadn’t she? And an adventure deserved a name.

How Susannah lost her tongue, rubbed dirt on her face, and made a fool of herself in front of the startlingly handsome gentleman.

There was no happy ending promised, but she might invent one.