Chapter Four
Four
Kate
The sun was setting by the time Kate walked down the manor drive with the other seamstresses.
She hadn’t left work, as everyone had urged.
She not only needed the money but the warmth of company.
Going home to a cold, dark house bereft of her eldest son and her newly-wed sister, would not ease her anguish.
Attending a good school, Arthur had a chance to be the learned gentleman he was meant to be. Brydie had married well and was living the life she should have had years ago. Kate couldn’t regret their departure, except for herself.
She only became aware of Major Fletcher behind her when she waved the last of her fellow workers off and turned toward the bakery where Brydie kept Rob and Lynly after school. She halted and glared at him. “Are you following me?”
“What could you do if I was?” he asked with a shrug of broad shoulders encased in a tailored, wool, soldier’s coat. He’d removed any insignia but hadn’t repaired the tears no doubt rendered by bayonets.
She rolled her eyes at his surly reply and hurried toward the gate of the baker’s cottage where her sister and her new husband had recently taken up residence. “Ask Damien. He and his brother taught Brydie and me how to take care of ourselves.”
He grunted and followed her up the newly cleared walk.
Aware that Fletch had a history with the woman who once lived here, Kate didn’t say more.
In the twilight, she admired the work Brydie and the neighbors had done to clear the wilderness of a yard.
Rhododendrons spilled their frilly blooms and daffodil heads bounced in the breeze.
Green shoots promised beauty for months to come.
She took the pathway back to the kitchen, where she’d find her sister and the children. Fletch diverted to the front with the new plaque announcing Damien Sutter, Esquire, solicitor. This new office was the reason the parlor at the inn was now available.
Rob waved at her from the chicken coop. It had made sense to move the chickens here so Kate needn’t worry about them when she worked late.
It seemed unfair to impose children on newlyweds, but Brydie and Damien treated Rob and Lynly as their own.
Brydie had, after all, helped raise them from infancy.
She’d miss them as much as they’d miss their aunt if they didn’t have these few after-school hours together.
Standing on a stool beside the sink, Lynly was up to her ears in biscuit dough when Kate entered the kitchen. She grinned and waved floury hands. Lyn and Rob both had birthdays in another week. Kate needed to come up with gifts. She had no idea how or what.
The enormous kitchen smelled of baking bread, even though the fires had been banked for the evening.
Something delicious bubbled on the fire.
On this gray spring day, Brydie had set the table in the kitchen, where it was warm.
Because the front room had been turned into an office, she and Damien had set up a small dining area for themselves in the sitting room upstairs.
They really ought to be allowed their privacy, but the kitchen table had been set for all of them tonight.
“You shouldn’t have to go home and fix a meal after a day like this.” Nearly a head taller than Kate, her unruly auburn curls escaping a cap, Brydie gestured for Kate to fill glasses. “And I understand we’ll need to arrange the funeral? I wish we’d had time to know her.”
“We really didn’t meet until we happened to run into each other on the drive a few weeks back. We knew nothing of each other.” But the physical similarities had caused them to laugh and stop to talk. “And finding hours when neither of us was working. . . I thought we’d have more time.”
Damien entered on those words. Taller than Brydie, his wheat-colored hair falling across a wide brow, his jaw stubbled at this hour, he was better looking now than he had been as a gangly boy. He briefly hugged Kate. “There is never enough time. I learned that the hard way. I’m sorry.”
She nodded, trying to tell herself it was better that they hadn’t been close to Mrs. Marie. “I need to sit down and write her family. The son is in Birmingham. Now that the bridge is open again, he might have time to come down for a funeral.”
She had the nosy urge to ask why Fletch had visited, but she refrained.
Not until supper was done and cleared away did she receive even a hint.
“I’ve asked Fletch to take you and the children home in the carriage. Since Brydie and I stay in town, we don’t need it. He’ll be staying over at the Hall for a while. Jacques is hearing ghosts.” Damien dropped that bit of news, then returned to his office before anyone could raise an objection.
“Ghosts?” Kate asked weakly, drying the dishes Brydie washed. The Hall was Damien’s childhood home, just across the road from her property.
Brydie frowned at the door between the kitchen and the front room. “No notion. The Hall is haunted, right enough. Damien despises it. But I thought Jacques was sleeping above the workshop.”
Jacques acted as Damien’s valet, when needed, but he was a trained bootmaker, and Sutter Hall had a shoe workshop.
“I don’t know how he can hope to sell anything out there. He needs a shop in the village, although I still can’t think there’s enough gentlemen wanting fitted boots to keep him in business.” Dishes dried, Kate began bundling Lynly into her coat.
“He’s learning to make unfitted ones, plus women’s shoes. Damien and I have been teaching him what we know, and he’s pretty good at learning. Once people know he does good work, perhaps they’ll order the fitted ones. Damien’s father did well as a shoemaker here.”
“Only because Mrs. Sutter pinched pennies and brilliantly invested his inheritance,” Kate said in scorn. “I doubt the old letch earned enough to put food on the table.”
Kate had earned the right to scorn Damien’s father. She tried never to think of him, but every time she looked at her eldest son, she had to remember the man who had forced himself on her and given her a child she hadn’t wanted. Married life hadn’t eased the shock, disgust, or loathing.
Her husband had been a quiet, unassuming man of a class well below hers. He’d bowed to her wishes and taught her not to fear him, but the anxiety was always there, gnawing.
Riding in a half-closed carriage with Major Fletcher would not bring her comfort.
But as she had for years, Kate suppressed her fear and did as expected, marching out to the waiting barouche.
The drive was only a couple of miles. They usually took a pony cart.
But for Lynly, who had never been healthy, Kate would accept the faster, warmer carriage.
Rob bounced in glee at the chance to sit on the front bench behind the horses.
“Thank you, Major,” Kate said through clenched teeth when he assisted her inside. She was shivering but not from cold.
“No difficulty. These nags need more exercise.” He didn’t discuss Jacques and ghosts or anything more, just checked to see they were settled and silently set the horses on their way.
His uncommunicativeness was almost a blessing. Weary and unhappy, Kate didn’t attempt to do more than listen to the children.
The carriage covered the distance far more swiftly than the pony, arriving only a little after sunset. Relieved, Kate glanced out to see if Fletch was dropping them off in front or back. With no one home, the house should have been dark. Instead, a lantern burned in the front room. What. . . ?
Unaware of the peculiarity, Fletch drove the carriage through the front gates to drop them off on the circular gravel drive.
Her home was a substantial stone farm house, built a century ago and added onto since.
The windows were all the same size and spaced equally.
No one had been here to close the shutters, so the light was quite visible.
Just as Rob cried, “There’s someone inside!” a sturdy figure stepped from the arched front entrance.
“Thee keep going, mind,” a deep voice with a thick accent commanded. “Place ain’t yerz no more. You bist tryin’ my patience eno’. Go back to thy sister, where thee belongs.”
Stunned, Kate didn’t know how to respond. She wasn’t Brydie. Fury was never her first reaction.
Fletch wasn’t so indecisive. “Rob, get down on the floor. Kate, you and Lynly sit back under the hood as far as you can.”
Startled that he even knew the names of her children, Kate reflexively followed orders and pushed Lynly behind her, covering her in the carriage blanket.
She recognized that accent now but didn’t have time to react before Fletch simply launched himself, like a mighty panther, at the man stepping into the drive.
The men hit the ground in an incomprehensible thudding of blows. When no shots were fired, Kate peered from beneath the blanket and gasped. Busy attempting to annihilate each other, the combatants were rolling downhill. “The fence!” she shouted. “It’s rotten.”
Too late, the brawling pair crashed into the picket fence only meant to keep children from falling into what her mother had laughingly called the ha-ha.
The blow of their combined weight took out an ancient post. The rotted planks cracked, and the combatants rolled off the stone retaining wall to hit the frozen ground below.
Hearing a groan but still no gunshots, Kate frantically scrambled from the carriage to see what damage the madmen had done to themselves.
The horses whinnied restlessly with no hands on the reins. Before she could order Rob to hold them, the intruder jumped up, holding his arm, and fled toward the woods.
Leaving Fletch sprawled on the ground, groaning and cursing.