Chapter Five
As she watched him clamber up the corner of the stable and the yard wall, using footholds from both, his dark figure looked more ungainly than she had ever seen him, as though he had never climbed as a boy.
Which was odd for someone of such an adventurous spirit.
Still, he got there, for she heard the faint thud on the other side of the wall.
She just hoped he hadn’t broken his ankle.
She realized with surprise that it had begun to rain, more of a lazy drizzle than a downpour.
She pulled the shawl over her head and hastened back to the outside steps.
As she retrieved her candle, still mercifully alight, and ran up, she hoped no one had locked the door.
Hopefully, they had all been too busy with their delivery of brandy and French speaking gentlemen.
The door opened easily, and she locked it carefully behind her before creeping back toward her bedchamber. She could hear no voices below or anywhere else in the dark house.
She shivered. She did not like the Rains couple at all.
There was a hardness, a ruthlessness about their eyes.
She could imagine them regarding two aristocratic women as too silly and too important to do away with.
But what of Jack? A solitary traveller with no obvious connections and somewhat physically fragile.
..although there had been strength in the arms that had pinned her to the wall.
Her stomach plunged all over again as she remembered the all too brief caress of his mouth...
She hurried on around the corner, shining her candle into all the shadows it would reach. It was with considerable relief she finally slipped back inside their own room and quietly closed the door.
“Lily? We need to make some excuse to...” She trailed off, looking rather wildly around the room in search of her stepdaughter. “Lily, where the devil...”
She even opened the hanging cupboard and looked under the beds, just in case the girl had taken fright at something, but her blood was running cold. Throwing off the damp shawl, she took up her candle again and marched back down the passage.
Emerging into unexpected light on the landing, she blinked at the scene lit up below her.
Three weary, travel-stained gentlemen stood in a huddle to her right, gawping with varying degrees of alarm at Mrs. Rains who stood, hands on hips, in the middle of the room, glaring up the steps, not at Tabitha, but at Lily—thank you, God!
—who seemed to have halted near the foot of the stairs beside a complete stranger in army uniform.
“Is there no food to be had at your hostelry, madam?” the officer was asking with a fair degree of irritation.
“’Course there is,” Mrs. Rains answered aggressively, “but she’s already had hers, and you was asleep!”
“I am now awake and hungry, and if the lady requires a glass of milk, I really do not see why she should not have one.”
Mrs. Rains, becoming aware of Tabitha’s candle and her movement toward the stairs, seemed to swear beneath her breath.
Lily and the officer both glanced around too. Before her stepdaughter could blurt something like, There you are, Tabitha hurried into speech.
“Why is this taking so long, Lily? If there is no milk in the house...”
“Lord lumme, of course there’s milk,” Mrs. Rains broke in. “I just got to serve these poor gents first, who’ve been travelling all day. Sit down, gentlemen, Rains will be in directly. The table is set for you just where you are...”
She moved to heft up a laden tray from the table nearer the kitchen door—or what Tabitha supposed was the kitchen door. “I’ll bring it up,” she snapped at the three on the stairs.
“That won’t be necessary,” Tabitha said regally, sailing the rest of the way downstairs and sweeping Lily and her unknown swain with her.
He was a pleasant-faced young man, who managed somehow to look pale beneath bronzed skin. It might have been a trick of the candlelight, but Tabitha suspected he had been injured, a suspicion confirmed when he limped aside and bowed to her.
“Oh, Tabbie,” Lily said brightly, “this is Lieutenant Meade who is also staying here. I met him in the passage. Sir, my stepmother, Lady Sark.”
“I am pleased to meet you, Lieutenant,” Tabitha said, glancing at the other men in the room.
She found the adults still standing, watching her as if stunned, although the accompanying boy had thrown himself eagerly onto the nearest chair at the table.
When his elders bowed to the ladies, he sprang up again and bowed too, gracefully enough to have been taught.
Although tall, he seemed to be younger than she had first supposed, surely no older than thirteen or so.
Interesting. Did spies and saboteurs normally bring their children along?
Rather to her surprise, the oldest of the three men walked toward her and bowed again. “Lady Sark? Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Smith.”
Oh, unimaginative! Although he spoke in perfect English, without the accents betrayed by most of the emigrees she had met.
“How do you do, Mr. Smith?” She looked pointedly at the boy.
“My son, Edward.”
Certainly another English name, though he may not have been born with it. The boy bowed again, his eyes wide now, as if he had started to pay attention. The third man had stepped back and was not introduced—presumably a servant.
“My stepdaughter, Lady Lily Lisle,” Tabitha said languidly.
“Dinner is served,” Mrs. Rains growled as she crashed the last dish down on the table.
“We shall wait here,” Tabitha informed her, taking a seat at an empty table not too close to the Frenchmen, “for our milk.”
“A small plate of cold cuts, or leftovers, with small beer, is all I require,” Lieutenant Meade added.
“Do join us, Lieutenant,” Tabitha invited, just as the door burst open in a gust of damp wind, and Jack De’Ath strode in, slamming the door behind him. He took off his hat and shook himself like a dog.
“Who the b-devil are you?” Mrs. Rains demanded.
Jack regarded her with unexpected hauteur. “The name is Johns, but you won’t know it since I have not reserved rooms. I have merely got separated from my people and need somewhere to stay for the night.”
“We’re full up,” Mrs. Rains said shortly. “It’s less than two miles to the tavern in Garth. They’ll take you in.”
As if she had not spoken, Jack said, “I shall have a bite of supper, and be sure the sheets are aired. Do send someone to see to my horse. There’s no one in the stables.”
Mrs. Rains scowled direly, her mouth opening and closing several times. Jack raised his eyebrow as though surprised to see her still in the room. She threw up her hands and stormed off to the kitchen, muttering.
Jack who, much to Tabitha’s amusement, carried the important gentleman role with surprising splendour, looked about him in a leisurely fashion. He nodded distantly to the Frenchmen, and to those now seated at Tabitha’s table.
Tabitha’s lips twitched uncontrollably.
Mr. De’Ath—now apparently Mr. Johns—gave no sign of recognition, but hung his hat on the stand by the door and languidly unbuttoned his overcoat.
Mrs. Rains re-entered the room with surprising speed, and this time the huge barrel-shaped figure of her husband followed.
Both bore trays and looked thunderous. The woman slapped two mugs of milk in front of Tabitha and Lily, and one of watery beer before Lieutenant Meade, then stepped aside to let her husband deliver a plate of familiar mutton stew to the officer.
Rains was breathing quickly, and his greasy hair was damp. But though his eyes were like flint he turned politely enough to the newest arrival. “Where would you care to sit, sir?”
“You are welcome to join us, sir,” Tabitha said amiably.
Jack inclined his head. “You are kind.” He sat in the vacant chair beside her. “My name is Johns.”
“So I heard. Mine is Sark. This is my stepdaughter, Lady Lily, and Lieutenant Meade.”
At least she had the pleasure of surprising him. His widening eyes flew to Lily and fixed upon her face. And that was when she felt her first ever pangs of monstrous, unbearable jealousy.
***
JACK HAD RATHER ENJOYED playing the haughty nobleman that his uncles and tutors had always wanted him to be. If he felt any resentment to see the dashing young officer sitting on Tabitha’s other side, well, he had always known his limitations. Who the devil was the man to her?
But it was the presence of Lily that made him gawp so stupidly when he should have been prepared for it.
Tabitha had told him when they first met that she was going home to collect her stepdaughter, but the fact had got lost somehow in the affair of the smugglers and the ridiculous, blazing happiness of being with her again so unexpectedly.
Lady Lily was still a remarkably pretty girl, though he doubted he would ever have recognized her from the six-year-old in pigtails and short skirts. There appeared to be some lively humour in her eyes and good nature in the curve of her lips.
Pulling himself together, he inclined his head to her and to Lieutenant Meade and let the innkeeper set a plate of stew in front of him.
“Wine, if you please,” he said in the tones of one who is always obeyed. “And don’t forget my poor horse.”
The innkeeper’s smile was so fixed that it looked more like a snarl, though he said, “Of course not, sir, we’re seeing to him now.”
The we troubled him. He hoped it was not the smugglers helping out for they were rough fellows, and he had grown fond of this horse. He resolved to go and check on him as soon as the meal was finished.
He barely noticed what he ate, although his entire household would have been scandalized by its plebian nature. He was too overwhelmed by his internal rejoicings to have Tabitha beside him, by the discomfort of Lily’s presence, and by the mystery of the smuggled Frenchmen at the next table.