Chapter Eleven #2
Kat expected her transformation into a woman to be even more of a shock to the household than the discovery that the wandering artist was the real owner of Carr Abbas, and the betrothed of their lady.
She changed in Miss Ellen’s room and came down to the kitchen to fetch the morning tray, and for a moment, everyone simply stared.
Then Jacob, who was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee, said, “Good morning, Miss Fivepence,” and there was an uproar—a dozen voices all asking questions at once, each louder than the one before to be heard over the din.
“Quiet!” Mrs. Kirby, who never had to raise her voice, made an exception in this case, and the servants reacted with instant silence.
“Miss Fivepence has been pretending to be a man in order to give better protection to her mistress,” Mrs. Kirby announced.
“Now that our lady’s wedding is imminent, she has resumed her usual attire.
Now be off about your work, all of you. Cook, is the lady’s tray ready? ”
The servants scattered to their work, but with glances toward Kat that hinted at more questions and comments when they had the opportunity. Not that Kat intended to add more to Mrs. Kirby’s explanation—Captain Harraway’s really. It sufficed, and was nearly the truth.
“I thought you would be back at the inn,” she said to Jake. “Won’t the captain be expecting you now the sun is up?”
“I wanted to see you, first, Kat,” Jacob replied. “This is the first time I’ve seen you in skirts since you were a girl of fourteen.”
The kitchen maid gasped at this revelation of their past acquaintance, and cook was avidly listening, too. “I’ve worn them ever since, you know,” Kat said, for the listeners’ benefit. “Until a month ago, when my lady first had to travel and needed the countenance of a male escort.”
Jacob pointed a finger downward and made a circle of it, and Kat obligingly turned right around, enjoying the way that her skirts belled as she twirled.
“Very lovely,” said Jacob. “I had best be on my way, my love. I shall see you at church. Will you share a prayer book with me?”
“I shall,” Kat agreed. “For my lady shall undoubtedly sit with your master.”
She picked up the tray as he headed for the door, and whisked herself back up the stairs before anyone could waylay her with questions.
She waited on Miss Ellen and walked with her to church, where Captain Harraway took over to lead the lady up to the Carr Abbas pew at the front, and Jacob offered his arm to escort Kat to her place among the servants at the back.
One of the other maids poked Kat in the ribs and whispered, “Why didn’t you say you were a girl?” But Kat ignored her, Mrs. Kirby sent her a glare, and the organist began the music for the entrance hymn.
After that, Kat tried to focus on the service, but she was very conscious of the man beside her, especially when he captured her hand and pulled it down between them, where it was hidden by her skirts.
He then proceeded to completely ruin her concentration by gently stroking his thumb across the back of her hand, or making patterns on her palm with one finger, until her whole body buzzed with his presence and she heard so little of the sermon that she fully expected a thunderbolt to fall on her from on high.
She started when she heard the vicar say her name. For a second, she thought he was about to deliver a scold, but when he went on to say, “…and Jacob Flynn of St Martin-In-The-Fields, London,” she realized he was calling her banns. Their banns, hers and Jacob’s.
And when, after the service, her fellow servants cornered her in the churchyard, her marriage to Jacob had taken priority in their minds over the revelation that she was female.
Not so the rest of the parish, she discovered later when she went to Miss Ellen to take her bonnet and coat after they arrived back at Carr Abbas.
“The vicar and Captain Harraway were kept busy explaining why you pretended to be a man and why you are now suddenly a woman again, Kat,” Miss Ellen said.
“I daresay it shall be a five-day wonder, however. Are you pleased to be back in your skirts? Or do you miss the freedom of breeches?”
“Skirts have their benefits, Miss Ellen,” said Kat. “For a start, the cool breeze in the hot church! But I do miss my boots, and that’s a fact.”
They saw no more of Waterford, and Captain Harraway said he must have left the area. Jake hoped it was true, but kept his weapon and his ammunition handy, especially on Monday afternoon, when they traveled to London.
However, the journey was uneventful. They had hired a carriage and postillions from The Feathers, and after they had dropped Miss Ellen and Kat at Grillon’s Hotel, they went on to that inn’s London partner, where the captain gave the postillions some cash to purchase their dinner and breakfast.
“Collect my lady and her maid at fifteen minutes past eight,” he ordered, “and take her to the church of St Martins-in-the-Field. I’ll need you back at the church by nine to collect us and take us back to Ealing.”
“We should bespeak a breakfast hamper to have in the carriage,” Jake suggested, and was given the job .
The captain had a restless night. Jake, well aware that he would be standing in the man’s shoes in two weeks, kept his tongue between his teeth and merely listened as the captain fretted out loud about everything that could go wrong between now and the wedding.
But none of it came true.
By half-past-nine, they were all back in the carriage on their way to Ealing, Captain and Mrs. Harraway side by side in the forward-facing seat, and Kat and Jake facing them with the breakfast hamper between them.
Mrs. Harraway, Jake noticed, did not have much of an appetite, but she nibbled on a pastry, ate a handful of very expensive hothouse strawberries, and drank a glass of wine.
The attack came as they passed through an area of scrubby forest just beyond Shepherd’s Bush.
At the sound of someone shouting for the horses to stop, both Jake and the captain reached under the rear-facing seat for the box containing their weapons.
Jake managed to jerk his head out of the way just in time to prevent them from colliding, and the captain brought the box out, opened it, and passed a gun and a box of prepared ammunition to Jake all in a few of smooth moments, even while the postillions yelled at whoever had stopped them, and the other person yelled back.
Jake knew that voice. Waterford. He didn’t wait, but picked out a paper bundle, tore the paper with his teeth, poured some of the gunpowder into the flash pan, and drove the rest of the package into one of the barrels with the loader that fitted under the barrels.
He did the same to load the other side, finishing even as the captain finished his and nodded to Jake.
Waterford’s voice, ranting about his rights and being ruined, approached the carriage door, coming down Jake’s side of the vehicle.
“Protect the women,” the captain ordered, and carefully opened the carriage door on his side, careful not to make any noise.
He was out and away before Waterford wrenched open the door, to be met with the barrel of Jake’s pistol.
Waterford, who was holding his own gun trained on the postillions, staggered back, and then collected himself. “Put that gun down, soldier!” He snapped the order.
“No way on God’s earth,” Jake told him. “My mistress and her maid are in this carriage, and I am sworn to defend them.” After a heartbeat, he added. “And for your information, I am not a soldier. I have left the army, and I only take orders from my employer.”
Waterford tried to see past Jake, who had stepped to fill the doorway. “Lady Ellen, Lady Ellen, I have no quarrel with you, my lady. Send Captain Harraway out, and I shall let you go. I just want to have a talk with him.”
“Talk about what?” That came from above them. Captain Harraway had climbed onto the carriage roof, though how he did it without rocking the carriage, Jake couldn’t begin to guess.
The lying swine who had ambushed them swung his gun upward and pulled the trigger. Jake shot him, and in the same moment heard a gunshot from above. Waterford crumpled. Jake had shot to kill, and he couldn’t imagine that the captain was feeling much more merciful.
The captain swung down from the carriage even as Jake was begging Mrs. Harraway and Kat to stay in the carriage.
“But I must see if Phil is unhurt,” Miss Ellen was protesting, when the captain looked over Jake’s shoulder to say, “Perfectly well, my love. Not a scratch. But I cannot say the same for our highwayman, so please stay there, dear heart. You do not need to see the body.”
Miss Ellen subsided. The captain bent over Waterford’s body, felt for a pulse and for breath and glanced at Jake while shaking his head.
“If this was Spain,” said Jake, somewhat wistfully, because it was not Spain, and the solution would not work, “we could sling him into the bushes and be on our way.”
“Instead of which, we’ll need to send a postillion back to the nearest magistrate.” The captain sighed, as if he regretted civilization at this moment as much as Jake did. “What a pest the man is. Or was , I suppose I should say.”
It was nearly an hour before the magistrate arrived. Jake had spread a carriage rug under the trees to give Mrs. Harraway and Kat a cool place to sit and had placed another rug over Waterford’s remains so they didn’t have to store a memory of the unpleasantness.
They refused the picnic hamper, but Mrs. Harraway accepted a sip from the captain’s brandy flask, and when Kat declared that one of the bottles of ale included in the hamper would be just the thing, Mrs. Harraway agreed to try one, too.
“Not the wedding day I had in mind for you, my dearest,” the captain told his wife. “I am sorry you had to be present for that.”