Chapter 1
Robert and Tessa Fleming were nothing to him.
It was only by chance that a precious relic of them, a trifle really, fell into Titus Brannock’s hands.
The smoke-damaged miniature left behind when Lieutenant Fleming departed on the patrol that would be his last must have meant little.
What provoked Titus to go to such effort to return it?
He couldn’t answer that. Riding a rutted road through the South Downs, his impulsive quest felt like a fool’s errand: find the widow; return the miniature; leave.
He was tempted to turn around, but it had taken him three months to dig up her whereabouts. The obscure corner of the war office that dealt with widows’ pensions was harder to find than he expected. It seemed a pity to stop now. Besides, he needed a distraction from his pointless life.
As the road meandered, so did his mind, while Hannibal, reliable though weary steed that he was, trudged on dutifully.
Titus entertained himself by pulling up his few pleasant memories of his time in Portugal and Spain.
Women bent along river banks, laundering their belongings and those of men who paid them.
Women cooking over open fires. Women carrying their children on their backs and their goods in a sack on long marches.
Women singing by campfires. Somehow Tessa Fleming’s image appeared in all of them, her hair shining golden in the sun like a beacon leading him on.
He shook his head to dispel that bit of nonsense. He hardly knew the woman.
He came at last into the village of Normanton, pulled up at a weathered inn whose sign proclaimed it to be the Duck and Spoon and left Hannibal with the ostler for a bit of feed and water. The keeper bustled over with an ale to greet him jovially when he carried his saddlebags into the tap room.
The man introduced himself as Tobias Hooper and sat down for a chat without waiting for an invitation.
It being the slow time betwixt lunch and evening revelry, he showed no signs of rising, happy to regale a stranger with bits about Normanton.
When Titus could get a word in, he asked directions to Tessa Fleming’s place.
“Easy enough. Turn ye down the second lane on yer right after ye ride out to the west. Look sharp so y’ don’t miss it,” he said. “But ye’ll not be back before dark,” he added glancing at the window. “Unless it is your intent to stay over w’the widow, o’course,” he added with a leer.
What must this man think of the woman?
Titus didn’t like the implication. Worse, he wondered whether perhaps he had reason. Was she a widow with easy morals?
“I’ll have a room for the night,” Titus said, biting out the words. “And another ale.” Hooper stayed where he was, gesturing to a boy cleaning the tap to bring two more. Titus suspected they’d both be on his tab.
“Have business with the widow, do ye?” The rotund innkeeper’s eyes glittered.
None that is any of your business. Titus held his tongue and sipped his ale. Unless he was mistaken, a woman watched from the kitchen door.
When Hooper gave up with a sigh and changed topic to the state of the roads, the woman came out of the kitchen with a rag in her hand and basin of soapy water on her hip and began to wash the filthy tables.
Lunchtime had passed, and the evening had not yet begun.
Again, those hard-working women in Spain came to mind.
He recalled Tessa Fleming as a tiny bit of a thing, but, like all women who followed the drum, she was a tough piece of work. She could carry her load and then some.
Titus rose to escape the incessant chatter, asked for a bath, and followed the innkeeper, now vociferously describing the inn’s ancient history, to a room.
Titus opened the door and paused. As the keeper thudded down the steps, he heard the woman say. “Don’t talk much, do he?”
He heaved his saddlebags on one of the two chairs pulled up to a table and hung his greatcoat on a hook by the door. Rolling his shoulders to relax them, he glanced around. The room at least was quiet and clean.
A traveler could only hope the promised bath would come soon and the water be hot. He removed his boots, undid his cravat, and rooted through the saddlebags for a clean shirt. He missed the spaciousness of his battered army trunk that had followed him on campaign.
He thought again of Robert Fleming’s trunk. It and the man’s worldly goods had been shipped home with the widow and, if Titus recalled correctly, little boy. When the officer who inherited the dead man’s quarters brought him the damaged miniature, he said only that it had fallen behind a cot.
A knock at the door interrupted Titus’s wandering thoughts. A burly sort in rough clothes dropped a tin tub by the hearth. “Best make yer own fire. Will be a bit to haul up all that water Bess’s heating.” He hesitated, hoping for a vail then shuffled out.
Bess, Titus assumed, must be the innkeeper’s wife. He did as the man bid and made a fire from the wood in the box next to the hearth using his own flint.
He stood coatless with his shirtsleeves rolled up staring into the fire. So far, the place seemed decent enough. He’d visit the widow in the morning, return for a night, and then set off home.
He shuddered. Home meant Astlough Hall, where he’d grown up and where his brother now presided as earl.
His welcome there, well-intentioned but lukewarm, wasn’t enough to satisfy.
He needed purpose, and they all knew it.
He haunted the halls and walked along the Norfolk cliffs and crannies, avoiding London and the lure of drink and dissipation that swallowed so many returning soldiers.
The constant melancholy that followed him threatened to take hold.
He reached in the bag and pulled out the miniature.
Titus brushed off what dirt he could and tried to make out the face of the woman.
Tessa Fleming. Damaged as the picture was, he had tossed it in his own trunk three years ago and forgotten about it.
He told himself he didn’t remember Fleming’s wife, but when he stared at the miniature a clear memory of her crossing a mountain torrent, baby on her back, skirt pulled above shapely calves, hair glowing in the sun, came uninvited.
Stuff and nonsense. He didn’t know the woman. He wrapped the blasted thing back up and lay it on the table, relieved when a knock signaled his bathwater had arrived.
The following morning, Titus reserved a second night and called for Hannibal early.
“Good y’ didn’t try to go last night,” Tobias Hooper said, pausing for the obvious question. When it didn’t come, he went on. “Roads are dangerous at night in these parts. Never know where Captain Moonlight himself will appear.”
Titus rewarded the little display of drama with merely a raised eyebrow.
Stuff and nonsense. Gentlemen of the road are always a danger. That is why I never travel unarmed.
The innkeeper’s wife stood at the roadside in front of the inn in earnest conversation with two well-dressed ladies so much alike they must be sisters.
When Titus trotted out of the yard, they followed him with avid eyes.
Riding away he made out a few words of their whispered conversation…
widow Fleming… handsome rogue… great beast… highwayman…
Great gods of Egypt, what do those gossips think I am?
He rode a little faster. The road arched over a hill and the village disappeared behind it before he spied the second lane on the right.
* * *
Robby burst into the little cottage calling for his mother. “Mam! There’s a rider coming down the road.”
Tessa gave him a swift hug. “He’s likely on his way and will pass by.” She didn’t like how cautious Robby had become. She had explained that no matter what the boys at the new school said, no night rider would attack them in their own home. Besides, it was still morning.
He nodded and turned toward the door.
Still, there were other fears. Ones she preferred not to tell a child. Fears specific to a widow living alone. More than one man came knocking, looking for things she had no intention of giving. She’d learned to be cautious.
“Robby,” she called. “Stop right there. Don’t you have reading to do for Mr. Weatherall?”
The boy’s chin dropped. “Yes Mam.”
She heard the sound of a rider coming closer. “Take a biscuit and get you up to your loft,” she instructed him, making shooing gestures. He did as he was told.
The moment he disappeared, she barred the door and stood by it, listening.
It wasn’t long before a firm knock, a man’s knock, echoed in the cottage.
She held her breath, hoping Robby’s obedient nature won over his curiosity.
She couldn’t think of any reason a man would approach her house. At least, no good one.
He knocked again. She ignored him again. The third knock was louder.
When she didn’t respond, a deep voice rumbled through the door, “Mrs. Fleming, I don’t know if you are in there or not, but I mean you no harm.”
So you say… “What do you want?” she demanded through the door.
“I— That is, I knew Lieutenant Fleming in Spain. I brought you something.”
After a moment she lifted the bar, unable to imagine who it could be. She’d heard from none of Rob’s colleagues in the years since she came here.
“Who are you?” she asked through a narrow crack.
“Titus Brannock,” he replied.
The name meant nothing to her, but something in the gentle voice that vibrated through her reassured her. She opened the door a bit wider. “I don’t know you. Again, what do you want?”
The tall stranger, hat in hand, gazed down at her with eyes the rusty brown color of oak leaves in winter. A shaft of sunlight splashed his brown hair with chestnut highlights. She held her breath.
“It is something of yours that came into my possession when you shipped home. It may be a trifle, but I think you might want it.” His voice wrapped around her like a warm quilt, a treasure she hadn’t had since her grandmother’s passing.
Don’t be a ninny Tessa, you know better than to go soft over a man. She held her ground.
“I’ve come a long way to bring it, and I have a long way home,” he went on. She thought he sounded hopeful.
She opened the door to face him, but if he thought she would invite him in, he was mistaken. She stepped out and pulled the door behind her. “I’m not in the habit of entertaining strangers, but you may leave this ‘trifle’ with me and be on your way,” she said.
He studied her long and hard as if she were a mystery to solve. It took strength but she met that piercing gaze. She peered back up at him experiencing a flicker of recognition, one that wouldn’t come into focus.
This one is a soldier for certain. It is in his bearing. In his confident determination. He wasn’t dressed like one; he wasn’t dressed like a poor man either.
At last, he nodded and tapped his hat back on his head. He reached into his fashionably tailored coat and pulled out an object wrapped in dark cloth and held it out to her.
When she took it, their hands touched briefly, and a jolt of feeling went up her arm to lodge somewhere in her center. She yanked her hand away.
At her gesture his lips quirked and he touched his hat. “I’ll leave you in peace. If you have questions for me, I’ll be at the inn in Normanton the rest of today. I’m leaving tomorrow.” He turned and left her murmuring belated thanks.
Tessa took the object to her kitchen table and unwrapped it. What she saw made her throat thicken. Tears, unanticipated and unwelcome, overtook her.
The miniature. The one I had made for Rob. The one he tossed aside so carelessly. As he did me.
She swallowed hard and pulled herself together, still staring at her own image, young and hopeful and yet covered in smoke and plunged in grey disappointment. She glanced at the door.
“Who was that man, and how on earth did he find it?” She ran to the door and looked down the road, but he was gone.