Sandra Heath (12 page)

“Why are you so intent upon riding to St. Tydfa’s?”

“Oh, just for the ride. I’m so weary of being cooped up inside. Why don’t you join me? I know how much you enjoy riding.”

For a split second Amabel seemed about to accept, but then shook her head. “I’m about to go to my room to lie down. I have a dreadful headache, and wish to be rid of it for dinner.”

Jane’s sixth sense stirred. Headache? Mrs. Brimstone didn’t have any such thing. She was up to something!

Henrietta touched Amabel’s wrist concernedly. “You go to your room immediately. I will not hear of anything else.”

“You’re so very kind and thoughtful,” Amabel murmured, bending forward to put cool lips to the bruise on Henrietta’s forehead.

“Promise you won’t tell Charlotte or Russell of my ride?”

“My lips are sealed.” With another rustle of sage taffeta, Amabel left again.

Instinct persuaded Jane to follow, and in a moment she was right behind Amabel, whose steps had quickened so that she almost ran to her own room. There the ghost watched her arrange pillows beneath the counterpane so it appeared someone was in the bed. Next Amabel took a blue woolen riding habit and thick gray cloak from the wardrobe, before unbuttoning her gown. Jane’s eyes widened with dismay. Far from taking to her bed with a headache, Mrs. Brimstone was about to go riding! And where else would she be going, but St. Tydfa’s? Henrietta was in danger! The ghost fled from the abbey to find Kit and Rowley on the cliffs.

Chapter Twelve

Raising the fur-trimmed hood of her crimson cloak, Henrietta slipped quietly down the back staircase, past the kitchens, and then out through the kitchen gardens. The sun was dazzling upon the snow and the air was bitterly cold as she crossed the stable yard to the empty stall where she knew the grooms and stable boys congregated at quiet moments. No one questioned her as she asked for a horse to be saddled.

A few minutes earlier, as she finished dressing, Marcus had been reading a newspaper in the conservatory. He wore a wine-red coat and gray trousers, and his unstarched muslin neckcloth was tied in a casual morning knot. His hair was very golden in the sunlight that streamed unhindered through the surrounding windows, and the only sound was of a page being turned. He was just reading a report concerning a recent attack by the
Légère
upon an unescorted East Indiaman in the North Sea, when he heard the mysterious dog again. This time it whined from somewhere close to the billiard table. With a start, he jumped to his feet.

After a very hasty consultation, Jane and Kit had decided to use the spaniel to lure him to a window from where he could see Henrietta riding out of the stable yard. Rowley was only too willing to oblige. He barked and then pattered noisily toward the door from the cloisters. Marcus flung the newspaper down in exasperation. “Devil take it, show yourself!” Nothing happened, but he could still hear the creature. It was leaving the conservatory via the ceiling, if he wasn’t mistaken! Damn it, this foolishness had to be solved once and for all! Pressing his lips determinedly together, he followed the sounds.

Encouraged by Jane and Kit, Rowley lured him up to a second-floor bedroom that was seldom used because it faced rather uninterestingly over the kitchen garden and stables. By the window the delighted spaniel was permitted to bark to his heart’s content.

Then he was silenced, and the sudden quiet made Marcus shiver. He glanced around, his natural cynicism insisting he had imagined it all. There was no such thing as the supernatural! Suddenly his attention was drawn out of the window to a movement of crimson in the stable yard. He recognized Henrietta in a moment. Was she completely mad? She shouldn’t be outside because she hadn’t had time to fully recover! What point was there in Charlotte sending for the doctor, worrying over her, instructing maids to sit with her, and so on, if the future Lady Sutherton was going to undo all the good by rushing out into the bitter cold? Damn it all, Henrietta Courtenay needed a lecture, and right now he was just the man to deliver it! Ghostly dogs forgotten, he turned on his heel, and strode from the room.

Jane breathed out with relief. “We’ve succeeded, Kit. He’s going after her.”

“To give her the wigging of her life, if I’m not mistaken,” Kit replied.

“Better that than the forfeit of said life,” Jane pointed out sagely. “Come on, let’s see what happens.”

Marcus paused only to don his greatcoat, gloves, and top hat, then in a minute or so he hastened to the stable yard. He and his invisible companions were just in time to hear the hooves of Henrietta’s horse echoing beneath the clock-tower entrance as she set off on her ride. He shouted her name, but to the ghosts’
frustration she didn’t hear because of the clatter of her chestnut mare upon the cleared cobbles. Then she turned onto the undisturbed snow of the open cliff top, and rode swiftly away. Marcus called a groom. “A horse, if you please! And quickly!” he instructed.

Clutching Rowley close, Jane looked urgently at Kit. “I’ll stay with Marcus; you go after Henrietta, you’re quicker than I am. But for heaven’s sake, remember she can hear and see you. And be vigilant for a whiff of sulfur!”

As Kit nodded and sped away in Henrietta’s wake, Marcus assisted the groom with a large bay thoroughbred. “Did Miss Courtenay say where she was going?” he asked, swinging the heavy saddle onto the horse while the groom attended to the bridle.

“No, my lord, just that she felt like going for a ride.”

At last the horse was ready, and Marcus mounted. “On no account are you to let Miss Courtenay ride again unless Lord Mulborough expressly says so, is that clear?”

The groom touched his hat. “It is, my lord.”

With Jane and Rowley at his heels, Marcus urged the bay in Henrietta’s wake, following the tracks her horse had left in the snow. They led him into the woods in the Mull valley, and past the old icehouse, which resembled little more than a tree-covered mound. Its entrance was choked with brushwood and fallen branches, placed there by those who’d hidden the Treasury gold, and to all intents and purposes it was as if no one had been inside for many a year.

The gold hardly crossed Jane’s mind, or Marcus’ as he rode on toward Mulborough. He reached the only road, which crossed the Mull on a fine stone bridge. Here he lost the tracks on the hard-packed snow. He rode on, and for a while thought he had found them again by the livery stable on the outskirts of the town, but soon he had to concede that he had lost the trail completely. There was nothing for it but to start questioning anyone he encountered, for someone would have seen a lady in a crimson cloak mounted on a chestnut mare. The first person he asked, an old fisherman returning to his cottage with a folded net over his shoulder, shook his head. A lady in crimson? No, he hadn’t seen her. And so it was to go on. No matter who Marcus asked, no one had seen Henrietta. It was as if she had vanished into thin air.

Realizing he was on the point of giving up the chase, Jane knew she had to do something to point him toward St. Tydfa’s. She didn’t really want to resort to supernatural means out here in the open, but all she could think of was drafting Rowley into action again. The spaniel was pleased to do as he was hade, and gave another ghostly whine. Marcus turned sharply in the saddle, hoping that this time it would prove to be an only too real town dog. But there was nothing. Groaning inwardly, he prepared to follow the sounds, for by now he knew what was expected of him.

The reason Henrietta had eluded Marcus was simply that she hadn’t ridden right into the town, but had instead taken a narrow back lane that afforded a shortcut to the church. She was only acquainted with it because the farmer who’d taken her safely home to the abbey after her fall on the church steps, had brought her that way on his sturdy cob.

With Kit following at a safe distance, Henrietta reached the junction of the lane with the road to the church, and she reined in as a woman with a donkey heavily laden with brushwood went down toward the town. The woman was singing
Greensleeves
, and the melody carried Henrietta back to the masked ball at Devonshire House. She and Marcus had come anonymously together during a cotillion being danced to the very same melody. Cotillions demanded forfeits, on this occasion a kiss. Their lips had brushed like the touch of gossamer on an autumn morning, but warm and trembling. Lip to lip, flesh to flesh, like the rediscovery of a long lost portion of both their souls. Was that too fanciful a way to describe her feelings in that heart-stopping moment? Maybe, but it was how it had been. That, and so very much more. She had known even then that he was her fate and her folly, but not that he was also her foe.
That
bitter realization had come later.

The woman’s singing still echoed in the lane as Henrietta rode up the steep gradient toward the southern headland, where St. Tydfa’s soared against the immaculate blue sky. By now she was finding the effort of riding rather exhausting. The vitality she’d enjoyed on waking had dwindled considerably, and she wished she hadn’t been quite so impulsive. But, having come this far, she intended to look at Jane Courtenay’s ‘grave’. And Kit Fitzpaine’s too, since it appeared he was also falsely supposed to have been interred at Mulborough. Henrietta shivered, both because of the cold and the horrid thought that the tragic runaways had really died on the dreaded Goodwins.

The headland was exposed and a bitter breeze came in off the sea. The snow was bright and ivy leaves rustled against the high churchyard wall as she dismounted and tethered her horse to one of the iron loops sunk into the stonework. Beyond the lych-gate, the yew trees overhanging the steps shivered and swayed as the draft of frozen air passed through them. At the very edge of the cliff precipice she saw where the donkey woman had gathered her brushwood. Some thick bushes had been cleared and left there, and Henrietta was surprised to find they’d been concealing a path that zigzagged dangerously down between boulders and wiry sea-blown shrubs to a narrow inlet where a flat rock formed a natural landing place. It was an old smuggler’s way, long since discarded in favor of somewhere less hazardous several miles to the south. Kit had followed her all the way from the abbey and concealed himself farther along the cliff edge among the dense fringe of bushes yet to be cleared. He peered out through the crowding twigs, hoping to glimpse Amabel, but instead saw a boy of about eleven hiding among the branches of the first yew tree in the churchyard. What was the little tyke up to? He was dressed snugly in a heavy brown coat that was several sizes too big for him, and there was a bright green-and-yellow knitted scarf wrapped around his neck. His spiky brown hair jutted beneath an adult’s hat that was now rather battered, and his bright eyes had followed Henrietta’s every move since she arrived.

Forgetting the smuggler’s path, Henrietta gazed at the panorama of Mulborough, the bay, and the surrounding moors. The snow-covered land was dazzling and the sea sparkled in the winter sun. On the other headland about two miles to the north rose the magnificent medieval splendor of the abbey, and in between was Mulborough, with smoke rising from its clustered chimneys. At the town quay where various vessels were moored, lay the weekly packet, awaiting the arrival of its naval frigate escort. But the finest craft by far was Marcus’
Avalon.
The richly ornamented sloop, with her white masts and decks, and gilt-medallioned stripes of red and blue along the waterline, was a brave sight. Tiny figures were visible descending the steps set against her hull, to go aboard a gig that was about to come ashore.

As Henrietta watched, the sloop suddenly seemed to become blurred, and turned to silver. Somehow the two masts became three, and the lean hull assumed the larger, more rounded proportions of an old merchantman. Henrietta squeezed her eyes tightly before looking again. To her relief, the
Avalon
was herself once more, but the occurrence was unsettling. What did it mean? That it was supernatural—and not imagination—she did not doubt.

Truth to tell, the glow of silver had been the first sign of Old Nick’s new plan. After a great deal of thought, the Master of Hades had lighted on a new weapon with which to defeat the struggling ghosts. It was something of which St. Peter guessed nothing, for after being uncharacteristically vigilant with the bolt of lightning, the good saint had been rather resting on his laurels.

All this was unknown to Henrietta as she went through the gate, and then passed right beneath the boy in the tree as she began to climb the steps toward the church. At last she reached Jane’s elaborate gravestone. The inscription was exactly as she remembered.
Anno 1714. Here resteth Jane Courtenay. Buried this sad Valentine’s Day. May she rest in peace.
Henrietta stared at the weatherworn stone. Jane didn’t rest here at all; she’d gone to a tragic grave off the coast of Kent. Turning, she thought how very blue and innocent the sea was today, as if it would never contain anything as treacherous and terrible as the Goodwin Sands. Pushing such things from her mind, she turned to go in search of Kit’s memorial inside the church.

Just then the boy dropped suddenly from the tree, and she whirled about with a startled gasp. He pointed out to sea. “It
is
‘er, isn’t it, miss?”

“Who?”

“The
Légère,
miss.”

Still hiding behind the bushes, Kit shaded his eyes against the sun. He saw nothing, not so much as the tip of a sail. Henrietta looked where the boy pointed, but the sea seemed empty.

“I can’t see anything. Are you sure you didn’t see the frigate coming for the packet?”

“The Frenchie’s the only one with that much rig, and she’s there now, I’m almost sure of it.”

“Then, shouldn’t you warn the town?” Henrietta suggested hesitantly, knowing how justifiably afraid the local people were of the privateer’s return.

“Well, I would, ‘cept I’m not certain sure, and I’ll get a beating if I raise the alarm and it ain’t ‘er after all. I was ‘oping you’d see her as well. I’ll shout loud as anything if someone backs me up.”

Henrietta studied the horizon again. The sea and sky seemed to shimmer together, but still she saw nothing.