Amanda Scott (17 page)

“Well, I for one don’t mind a bit,” said Kingsted. “I like bustle.”

“You’ll find it in Royston,” Abberley promised him. “Market day is like a circus.”

And so it was. The town was filled to its boundaries with carriages, carts, traps, and gigs, not to mention the people who rode in them or walked along the roadway. Making their way through the narrow streets proved a difficult task, for pedestrians took little care to remain on the flagways and were wont to step off in front of unwary riders or coachmen without the slightest sign that they intended to do so. The nearer the four riders came to the market square, the denser the crowds became. When a clearing appeared ahead of them, Margaret spurred Dancer, only to rein the mare in again quickly when Abberley’s shout warned her that the people were stepping aside not for the road traffic but to make way for two men leading a huge black bear on a chain. Once the bear had passed, the crowds closed in again. When Margaret glanced back over her shoulder, the earl was scowling.

She grinned saucily at him, but fearing they would never find each other again if they became separated, she reined in next to Kingsted’s big black, then looked around once more to be certain Pamela and the earl were still right behind them. A wagon loaded nearly to overflowing with children and chickens, as well as the farmer and his fat wife on the bench seat at the front, pulled in ahead of them, and for some moments they were able to ride faster as people moved casually out of the path of the four horses pulling the wagon.

“Seems a pleasant little town,” said Kingsted to Margaret once they had emerged from the narrow, crowded streets onto the Icknield Way, still traffic-laden, but not so confining. “I wouldn’t mind exploring a bit on a quieter day.”

“Indeed” agreed Margaret, smiling at him, “it is a very historical town, sir. It even has its own royal palace, you know.”

“No, by gad, I didn’t. A royal palace? Surely, you’re jesting, ma’am.”

Abberley and Pamela had drawn abreast of them as they rode out of the town, then had pulled ahead so as not to block oncoming traffic. The earl called back now over his shoulder, “No, she’s not jesting. Royston Palace is a symbol of one of our greatest claims to fame, the fact that James the First, who was hunting-mad, spent a good deal of time here.”

“The Scottish bloke, you mean, the one that trotted down to take over London after Elizabeth stuck her spoon in the wall?”

“That’s the one,” the earl told him, nodding.

Pamela laughed. “He took over a bit more than London, sir,” she said, looking back over her shoulder at him as Abberley had done. “My father enjoys reading history, you see, so I have heard the stories many times. James Stuart, on his southward progress from Holyrood to assume the crown after Elizabeth’s death, took a great fancy to the high Chiltern heathlands around Royston. Very soon afterward he acquired two old inns in Kneesworth Street to which he added a series of new and spacious buildings that were known then as the King’s Lodgings and which are now called Royston Palace.”

“By gad, ma’am, you’re as good as a guidebook,” exclaimed his lordship appreciatively.

“Oh, no, I’m not so good as that,” denied Pamela, still laughing. “Every schoolchild hereabouts knows that much of the tale. I’m afraid his majesty made himself rather unpopular, however. For one thing, he ordered that all game within a radius of sixteen miles should be preserved for his own pleasure, and he appointed keepers to deal with poaching.”

“See here,” exclaimed his lordship, looking at Abberley, “don’t your estate date from before the Stuart reign?”

“It does,” acknowledged the earl, “and in answer to the question hovering upon your lips, it also falls within the designated radius. My ancestor of the time was not a particular fan of James the First’s either. There was dissension, not to say dismay, when he was informed that the game on his estate was to be preserved for the king’s pleasure. There was also, I imagine, more than a little disobedience to the royal order.”

“He said the hunting was for the benefit of his health, did he not?” asked Margaret, racking her brain to remember the little she knew about the matter and raising her voice so that the two riding ahead would hear her.

“That’s right,” Pamela said. “He enjoyed such felicity in the hunting life at Royston that he desired his council to take charge of the burdens of state and see that he not be interrupted nor troubled with too much business.”

“Which was all very well and good,” said Abberley, grinning, “but in 1605, while his majesty was shooting quantities of little birds on Royston Heath, his secretary of state, Sir Robert Cecil, received his first intimation of the Gunpowder Plot in the form of an anonymous letter addressed to Lord Monteagle of Furneux Pelham, warning him not to attend the opening of Parliament, and such was the royal devotion to sport—or was it to health?—that two full days were allowed to pass before James was informed.”

“Only just in time to assure the safety of Parliament,” inserted Pamela, “not to mention that of the king himself, for naturally he would have deserted the heath to attend the opening.”

“I say, Miss Maitland,” said Kingsted, looking at her respectfully, “that’s fascinating. Of course, I ain’t such a dunce that I never heard tell of the Gunpowder Plot, but I’d no notion such a little town as Royston figured in the tale.”

“Oh, we were involved in more of James’s history than that, sir. Why it was right here on the heath that he signed the death warrant of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1618.”

“And,” added Abberley, looking back at Margaret, who in her enjoyment of the conversation had fallen silent beside Kingsted, “he was still shooting little birdies on Royston Heath a month before his own death in 1625. Look here, John,” he added suddenly, “if you’re so set on learning the entire history of the place this morning, why don’t you ride up here alongside Miss Maitland? I am persuaded she will get a crick in her neck if she is forced to talk over her shoulder. She can tell you how it was that the townspeople finally managed to express their hostility toward the mighty hunter.”

“I know that tale,” Margaret said, chuckling. “You mean the Jowler story, don’t you, sir?”

“Right,” said Abberley, reining in beside her and allowing Kingsted to take his place beside Miss Maitland. “You tell it, then.”

“Well, Jowler was the king’s favorite hunting dog,” Margaret said, “and supposedly one day he was found with a note round his neck that said, ‘Good Mr. Jowler, we pray you to speak to the king (for he hears you every day and so he doth not us) that it will please his majesty to go back to London, for else the country will be undone. All our provision is spent already and we are not able to entertain him longer.’”

Kingsted roared with laughter and demanded to know if King James had taken the hint.

“No, of course not,” retorted Abberley. “Royalty never takes hints, as you should know from your own experience with them. Uh, oh,” he added, reining in, “I think Apollo has picked up a stone. If Miss Caldecourt doesn’t mind, you two can ride ahead while she bears me company. We’ll catch up before you reach the hill road.”

The other two, already engaged in a discussion of Charles the First, who used Royston Palace on his way to and from Newmarket, went on with barely a nod to acknowledge having heard the earl’s suggestion. Margaret, to whom the facts were quickly returning of stories heard throughout her childhood, wondered if Pamela would have reached the part about Charles being held a prisoner in the palace before they caught up. It was just as well, she decided, watching Abberley examine first one of his horse’s shoes and then another, that Kingsted had not seen Royston Palace before hearing the tales of its early history. Much of the original building had been replaced less than forty years before with an ordinary eighteenth-century house whose greatest claim to distinction was a shell-hooded door set beneath a Venetian window. Though the palace was still crown property, it didn’t look as though it ought to be. In fact, one could easily pass along the street in front of it without noting its existence.

“Have you found the stone, sir?” she asked politely.

Abberley looked up at her, grinned, and dropped the hoof he was holding. His horse pawed the ground as though to scratch an itch. The earl chuckled. “Couldn’t find a thing. If he picked one up, he must have got rid of it himself.” He swung up into his saddle.

“There was no stone,” Margaret said, watching to see if he would insist that there was.

He didn’t. “True. I wanted to talk to you. Are you annoyed with me?”

Surprised by the direct attack, she stared at him.

“Well, out with it. Are you? You’ve scarcely spoken a word today, and you haven’t said much the last few days either.”

“I haven’t seen you to speak to,” she pointed out.

They were moving forward again, but the others were well ahead of them now, and Abberley didn’t seem in any hurry to catch them up. Other travelers were fewer now that they were farther from Royston, although there were still passersby and occasional family groups, some enjoying picnics on the grass alongside the road.

“I have visited the manor every day since my other guests departed,” he said. “I have spoken to Timothy, but I seem to meet you only in passing.”

“You have made little point of looking for me,” she said calmly.

“Well, I have been busy,” he said. “There is more work at the hall than I had imagined. After being lazy for so long, I find it is taking more energy than I’d anticipated to get my affairs in order again.”

“I cannot think why you should believe me to be angry with you, sir,” Margaret said, returning to the point at hand. “I have no right to be. You are carrying out your duties with regard to Timothy as well as anyone would.”

“Thank you,” he said dryly, “but I did give him that damned pony.”

“You weren’t responsible for the thorn,” she retorted. “Moreover, we have discussed the matter already.”

“Very true, but somehow it is difficult to forget that if I had left well enough alone, the opportunity for mischief would never have arisen.”

“Don’t be daft,” she scolded, her brows forking above her eyes. “If it hadn’t been a thorn under the saddle, it might have been something else. Something more certain,” she added with a sigh.

“All right,” he said, suddenly smiling, “if it wasn’t giving Timmy the pony, what have I done?”

“I told you, nothing.” She was startled by her reaction to the smile. It was almost as though he had caressed her. She looked away, trying to calm her feelings.

“Then, why are you so quiet today. You do like John, do you not?”

“Yes, of course I do,” she snapped, “but I shan’t marry him, so you needn’t think I shall.”

Abberley stared at her, pursing his lips in a silent whistle. “So that’s the rub.” He was silent for a moment, but he didn’t take his eyes off her, and though she refused to look at him, she knew she was blushing furiously. What a discussion to be having with a gentleman on the high road. “It was all that talk of mine about how he’d come to Hertfordshire in search of an heiress, wasn’t it?” he said gently.

She nodded, still blushing.

“You are not precisely an heiress, are you?”

She shook her head.

“I thought I must have heard if you had come into a great fortune.”

Margaret raised her head, glaring at him now. “I am very well to pass, however, sir. You know that.”

“True.” He appeared to think the matter over. “There is also the fact, as John himself pointed out, that he is not in need of a true heiress.”

“Although he would not turn one down,” Margaret said, unable to stop herself.

Abberley chuckled. “Do you know one who would offer to oblige him?”

“No.” She looked at him more directly now. “You did make me think you meant to look out for my best interests, you know, just as you did in the old days when you and Michael were always telling me what to do.”

“For your own good. Yes, I see how you might have thought I would be capable of such manipulation. However, I can assure you that I do not look to see you married to John. He would not do for you.”

“Now you sound like Aunt Celeste, who said the very same thing about Frederick Culross.”

“Sensible lady.”

“You did not think so when she had you shut up in the north tower,” she reminded him, not caring to discuss Culross.

“Of course not. That was different.”

“Well, I think it was entirely sensible. You had no business to be going off to London when you were needed here.”

“Did you need me, Marget?”

The tone was a new one, and she glanced at him sharply. He was looking straight ahead. Oddly, she didn’t wish to answer the question. Even the thought of admitting that she had needed him was frightening. The muscles in her stomach tightened and she couldn’t speak. She turned away, staring hard at the road in front of her.

The Pen Hills were on their left now, rising to chalky crests. There was no hedge on that side, only turf and scrub, marked for many yards here and there with tracks made over the years by wagons and coaches pulling off the main road when it was too rutted for easy passage. The land, a canvas of assorted shades of green, brown, and yellow, dotted everywhere with brilliant wildflowers, rose up to considerable swells of chalk, cloven sometimes gently and sometimes abruptly into deep narrow valleys, some smooth as lawns, some beautifully filled with thick stands of oak, beech, or hornbeam trees. Tumuli—those artificial hillocks or mounds believed by many and actually proved in more than one case to be ancient graves or barrows—were scattered over even the smoothest parts of the greensward, and down from the ridge of the high land came more and more deep, curving trackways. There were people walking for pleasure on the grass above the road, and Margaret could hear the sound of children laughing, although she could see no children at the moment.

“Are you going to answer me?” the earl asked quietly.

“You were meaning to shirk your duty,” she muttered. “Timothy had been injured.”

“There was nothing I could do about that. He was in good hands, and I thought you would be happier without my face about for a time. I thought then that you would blame me for giving him the pony.”