A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (23 page)

Will had no time to ponder what piece of whimsy or nostalgia might have persuaded his father to name a horse Blue Peter after the naval flag that signaled a ship’s readiness to put to sea, because that unfamiliar spurt of jealousy that had him feeling fratricidal yesterday was back, dispersing itself through his chest like hot shrapnel at the thought of Thomas admiring Preston’s elegant physicality. And along with the envy was a creeping unease that must have sprung from his conversation about the potential motives of crabby old Lord Aldridge. “And speaking of Miss Antigone, where is she?” Will found himself looking back over the lawn, as if he might have somehow missed the sight of his appalling friend and her great beastie of a ripping black mare walking across Downpark.

“Still out, I should think.” Thomas shrugged. “The hounds were in full cry, and closing on a good line when I had to pull up.”

“Did she see you pull up?”

“I don’t know.” Another shrug. Thomas clearly hadn’t given it a thought. “She was well ahead, just behind the master. It was a blistering run. But someone will have told her what happened.”

They had reached the stables where a lad came jogging out to take the hunter’s reins. “He’s thrown a shoe, Jonesy,” Thomas explained. “The off fore. Let’s make sure it’s well wrapped.” He watched his mount being led away with an air of resignation. “Well, there’s an end to the day.”

Was it? Not for Will. The feeling of instinctive warning that had sent him out into the rain remained unabated. “What were your plans if you had not drawn up? Had you planned to come back here with Miss Antigone? How did you plan to see her home?”

“Why would I bring her home?” Thomas looked at him as if he had two heads. “She lives in the other direction.”

“All the more reason for you to see her home, Thomas. She was your guest, riding to the hunt at your invitation. A gentleman always sees to the benefit and welfare of his guests.”

“How could I do that with a lame horse?”

The boy had a point. But the feeling of unease, of something not right, intensified, leaving him irascible and unsure. And he took it out on Thomas. “You’ve got a lot to learn about the finer points of gentlemanly behavior, Thomas. A gentleman does not leave a lady to ride home unescorted across the countryside, no matter how inconvenient to himself, or how great and ripping her mare. An officer and a gentleman never leaves a comrade behind.”

“It’s not as if she expected me to look after her.” Thomas’s tone was just short of indignant. “She got here on her own—met me at the southwest gate, a little past seven. Must have left Redhill on her own, sometime well before that. I should suppose since the hunt was taking her west, she could easily take the London road home from Horndean.

Will had his brother by the collar, and was hauling him like a recalcitrant midshipman toward the carriage house before he fully knew what he was doing.

“Will! What in blazes is wrong with you? Let me go!”

Will tightened his grip. “Broad Ham,” he called into the carriage house. “Broad Ham, I need a carriage. Now. A fast one.”

“Young sir?” Broad Ham appeared in his considerable shirtsleeves. “Bit of a bother, sir?”

“I need a fast carriage. Thomas can drive. Fast and light. Right away.”

Thomas immediately stopped struggling. “We can take the high-flyer,” he suggested with alacrity, even though he had no idea where or why Will wanted them to go, only that another opportunity for driving had presented itself. “It’s the fastest with a pair under.”

“Your brother, the viscount, has spoken that phaeton for this afternoon,” Broad Ham countered firmly. “I could recommend the curricle as just as fast, if driven smartly.”

“Whatever you choose. Thomas will be driving very smartly, indeed.” Will released Thomas with a shake. “First of all one doesn’t leave a young lady, no matter that she is older than you, to take the London Road unescorted. Ever. And secondly, there is to be a massive political rally today at Horndean. Which you would know if you kept your eyes and ears open. The broadsides are posted on every empty wall and window in the district.” Will had seen them himself, plastered up on walls in Petersfield two nights ago. “The magistrates are like to have constables out in force to keep an eye on things. And if there is one thing I have learned in all my years at sea and at war, it is that when a force meets with opposition, something explosive is bound to happen.”

And his friend Preston had shown a bloody remarkable penchant for getting herself into violent scrapes. It was a combination of intent and opportunity that he could not like in the least. He had asked her not to roam about the countryside at night, but had never thought to extend that prohibition to the day. Not that she would have heeded him. And why would she? As little as Lord Aldridge was to her, he was even less. Aldridge might claim the rights of a stepfather, but Will had no claim to be anything to her but a friend.

But friends, and certainly gentlemen, did not let their friends walk into a potential riot blind.

Broad Ham seemed to grasp his urgency. “Right, then. If it’s Master Thomas to take the reins, I suppose I might let you take the bays—”

Will didn’t wait to hear the rest. He left Broad Ham and Thomas to settle upon the details, and ran back into the house to collect what he might need—ready money, his map, his well-worn but serviceable sea coat, and a brace of pistols from the bottom of his sea chest. God only knew if he would need them, but it was better to be prepared than caught unawares. And he was nothing if not supremely aware.

As little as he had been in England over the past decade, he was his father’s son, and the earl’s very regular and very detailed correspondence had kept him abreast of current affairs and the current state of debate about the fairness of the Corn Laws. And while Will did not have an opinion—he firmly believed what he had told Preston, he had duty not politics—he knew full well that the mood in the country, and even more so in the towns and cities, was restive at best, and turning uglier by the day.

He was back outside, and pulling on his gloves, when Thomas brought the racing curricle smartly up the drive with two big bays under the pole.

“This is your chance to redeem yourself as a gentleman, Thomas,” he said as he vaulted up to the high bench seat. “Get us to Horndean, and don’t spare the horses.”

*   *   *

By the time the second fox of the day had been run to ground in Motley Wood, and a member of the Ditcham Hunt had been kind enough to inform her that young Mr. Jellicoe’s horse had thrown a shoe, and that the young man had accordingly taken himself home sometime ago, Antigone was well away from anything familiar.

Still, she had a good eye for the lay of the land, and a prodigious memory of the local maps from Papa’s collection of atlases. The Portsmouth-to-London road would lie somewhere to the north, and from the village of Horndean, she should be able to find the turning east toward Downpark, and the road home to Wealdgate. But Velocity was winded from such a long run, and from Horndean it would take Antigone a good four hours to walk the mare home—it would still be over three hours once Velocity was recovered enough to trot occasionally. It would be pushing dark by then. She had almost left it too late.

Antigone cursed her own bloody-minded foolishness. She had only herself to blame for getting herself into such a predicament, all so she could tweak Lord Aldridge’s considerable nose by riding in a rival hunt, and perhaps see Will Jellicoe again.

But it had all come to naught. Thomas was long gone, and as she neared the normally sleepy market town of Horndean, where she had hoped to water Velocity and perhaps procure something warm and restorative for herself at an inn, she found the road mired in mud and jammed with traffic.

Drovers and stockmen, private carriages and mail coaches alike, were moving at a crawl due to the number of people who had come to an open-air political meeting being held in a large field just off the turning of the Portsmouth-to-London road.

She had seen the signs two nights ago—a broadsheet had been put up on the wall of the inn in Petersfield—but she was surprised to find the gathering so very large. And so very male. And so very disagreeable.

The hustings had been erected in the middle of the field, and even in the soggy weather, a jumble of carts and drays jammed the broad turning of the road. Beyond that, the lane leaving east toward Downpark, and the easiest way home to Wealdgate and Redhill, lay along the north edge of the field. The crowd was thinner away from the hustings, but there were still more than enough rowdy, agitated, wet men milling along the edges of the field, standing in the muddy roadway, or ducking around doorways out of the constant drizzle to make the going uncomfortable, and potentially dangerous for a woman alone.

And, if she were not mistaken, the local magistrates had collected themselves in an upper room of the inn called the Ship’s Bell, from whence they might keep a less than approving eye on the proceedings and identify any potential malefactors. No doubt they would cast their disapproving eye upon her—an unescorted woman, alone on a public street—as well.

Here was another opportunity to take advantage of the supposed impropriety of her situation. Lord Aldridge was a magistrate himself, in Sussex. A report of her, alone and unescorted on a public street, in the middle of an agitating political rally, was sure to find its way to his ear, and combined with her other offense for the day, in riding rather forwardly with a rival hunt, might put paid to his tiresome regard.

But there was Cassie to consider. Antigone had hoped the morning with Thomas Jellicoe might strengthen the intimacy that appeared to be growing with the Jellicoe family, but had no idea yet of how to take advantage of it for Cassie’s benefit.

She would have to avoid the inconveniently convenient magistrates and skirt the main road until she could rejoin the London Road somewhere north of the village, where no one would see her or remark upon her presence.

But others clearly had the same idea, and the byways were just as clogged. People gave way easily enough—Velocity was a big animal and could be intimidating. Antigone used the big filly to her advantage, and though she kept firm control of her mount, the young mare was skittish in a heavy crowd—or maybe she could sense the jangling alertness in her mistress. However it was, the mare was tense and restive beneath Antigone, shying and sidling as people, animals, and carts slipped and slid through the puddles and mud around her.

From the side of the road, two large fellows seemed to appear out of nowhere, startling her into heightened alertness. She wheeled the mare and shook out the coil of her long hunting whip, but instead of a threat, she was met with an apology.

“Yer pardon, missus,” one of them called as they loped by in order to cadge a lift on the back of a brewer’s dray that had swung into the river of traffic in front of her.

To her newly awakened eyes, the men had all the appearance of sailors—the mahogany of their skin, their wide canvas trousers, and the fact that one of the fellows wore a long old-fashioned blue coat and a red waistcoat over his checked shirt gave hint to their profession.

Her thumping start subsided into curiosity, and when they noticed her regard, and the sailor with the coat knuckled the brim of his low, round hat respectfully, Antigone was emboldened to speak. “I do beg your pardon, but are you by any chance men of the navy?”

“That we are, ma’am, I thank you. Veterans of the French Wars, my brother and I.”

“Were you attending that meeting?”

The two exchanged a swift look, and then the one with the long blue coat answered. “Not purposely, ma’am. Just passing through, we are.”

Perhaps they were worried—and rightly so judging from the magistrates in the windows above the High Street—at being taken for agitators. “Of course,” she assured them. “I was just curious what they were speaking about.”

“On about the corn, they are, ma’am. All about the corn.”

“Oh, yes. It has been a matter of some concern for some time now.” The current high price of corn was a great concern to producer and consumer alike. The good return Redhill had enjoyed on their few acres of grain in the last harvest had benefited their income greatly, even as the rising price of bread had forced other economies.

“Has it, then, ma’am?” the fellow asked politely, but without any interest in the answer.

Antigone felt herself smile. They were an interesting breed, these sailor men. “I have a friend who is a gentleman of the navy—an officer—who thinks much the same. He says he has duty, not politics.”

“That’s the way of it, ma’am, exactly,” the blue-coated fellow agreed. Whether or not he believed it, he seemed happy enough to accept the explanation. “That’s the right of the thing.”

His friend was not so amenable. “But we’ve no duty now, have we, eh Jack?” said the more taciturn of the two.

Jack frowned and shook his head, but didn’t disagree.

“Then are you without a ship at present?” Antigone asked.

“You’ve the right of it again, ma’am. Looking for work, we are. Hoping for better in London.”

“Like many of your profession, I understand. I wish you well of it, then.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Antigone let the conversation subside, as the traffic began to thin out as soon as the byway intersected the London Road on the far north side of the village. She had room to move from behind the dray, but she didn’t like to press Velocity to go faster so soon—not before she had had a chance to water her. There had to be another inn along the road somewhere ahead.

In the meantime, she thought about dismounting, and walking Velocity for a time, as the mare would recover faster without the additional weight. Still there was the mud, and she would be more vulnerable on the ground. The sailors were polite enough, but they were strangers, and she didn’t like the amount of traffic. Perhaps at an inn—

“Watch yourself, missus,” her new friend called in warning as she moved out toward the center of the road as the dray suddenly swung wide.

But Antigone had heard it, too—the wheels of a fast-moving vehicle coming hard on her right. She moved Velocity smartly back in the wake of the dray, narrowly missing a stockman driving two head of cattle that the dray had just overtaken.