Burning Bright (Brambridge Novel 2) Read online

James blinked. The thought of a small woman with red hair tugged at him. Slowly he shook his head.

  “Oh dear,” his sister said, falling back into the long grass. “Father’s got a lot to answer for.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Mrs. Madely took a quick step back from the counter, her rotund body threatening to spill from her tightly laced dress. Bile rose in Harriet’s throat and she hesitated, but her feet were already on the rush mat. With an inward shudder, she pasted a courteous smile on her face, and tapped the shop door closed behind her with her heel. Mrs. Madely was a harridan, a gossip, and the vicar’s wife, her aunt’s employer.

  But it was Edgar whose words accosted her first from behind her.

  “Miss Beauregard.” He pushed passed her, slamming closed the door that he had silently opened, and hurried to the counter. “Mrs. Madely, how lovely.”

  Slamming his cane onto the countertop, he tipped his head to one side and stared at Harriet, the perpetual sneer on his face wider than usual. “You think to come here and sell me lace?” Harriet frowned, but he gave her no pause. “I know what you were trying to do, make your cut and take what money was rightfully mine. I know all about people who do that.”

  “I’m not taking any money.” Harriet put her hands on her hips. “I’m just trying to achieve a fair price for their work.”

  Edgar turned and slammed the cane down on the counter again. Both Harriet and Mrs. Madely jumped. “A fair price? The price is what I dictate.” He raised his chin. “Isn’t that so, Mrs. Madely?”

  “Of course, dear Mr. Stanton. After all you have done for them, that they treat you like this. I wonder what your clients would think of them. I know for a fact that Lady Guthrie your pre-eminent customer is very exacting in the provenance of all her clothing.” Mrs. Madely lifted wide eyes to Harriet.

  Harriet clenched her fist in her skirts. Mrs. Madely would have made a very good Lady Macbeth.

  “I know that you went to Ottery St Mary on behalf of those stupid women.” Edgar switched his glare to Mrs. Madely and thumped the counter again, this time with his hand, and cursed as the cane rolled off the top and fell on the floor. Harriet took a step sideways as he slid into the main shop, advancing towards her. Harriet looked to Mrs. Madely for some help, but it was evident that the woman was more interested in what was about to befall Harriet.

  Edgar crowded Harriet, pushing her back into where the shelving started. Despite his slight figure, his eyes held a menacing glint. He licked his lips, causing them to gleam as brightly as his oiled auburn hair. Harriet took a further step backwards. Only a week after James had left, Edgar had insinuated himself into Harriet’s company, appearing wherever she went. And then he had propositioned her. At first delicately, asking her to marry him, but then, when she had refused politely, he waited for her every day on the path to the schoolhouse when Harriet was alone. It was then that she had started taking Isabelle and the cart for the short distance. However, over the past six months, to her relief, he had not been so familiar.

  She held her breath as Edgar brought his hand up. He looked at it as if it should hold something, and then dropped his arm back to his side, the fist tightly clenched. “I overlooked your relationship with that lowdown blacksmith, telling myself that in time you would come to see things my way.”

  “I beg your pardon—”

  “But with this act you have finally betrayed me. I won’t pay for your lace. And you had better remember who pays your wages.” Edgar thrust out his arm again. Harriet flinched, but his hand stretched over her shoulder to the shelf beyond, and plucked a purple ribbon from a basket. He turned and, without a backwards look, approached the counter again.

  “Mrs. Madely, I saw this ribbon and I thought of you. I always think of you when I see this ribbon.”

  Harriet blinked. The look in Mrs. Madely’s eye was quite sickening. Her lips were set in a triumphant smile. Harriet shuddered; the vicar’s wife was welcome to his affections.

  “Thank you so much, Mr. Stanton,” Mrs. Madely simpered. “This will go so well with my dress.”

  Harriet gulped. The woman’s taste was truly awful. A purple ribbon and a green dress? Mrs. Madely’s expression hardened and she cast a sharp look in Harriet’s direction. Oh heavens. Harriet had gained nothing by coming to Edgar’s. She still had the lace, Edgar had threatened her wages and now Mrs. Madely, her aunt’s employer, was angry with her.

  Fiddlesticks.

  **

  Despite taking a long walk after leading Isabelle and the cart back to the cottage, Harriet was unable to shake the feeling of disquiet that dogged her. Still, she sat back in the uncomfortable school chair and listened attentively to the performance in front of her. Her finger rested lightly on the small creased book as she traced the dialogue across the page. She didn’t need to read it—she knew the dialogue by heart.

  “Will you pluck your sword out of his pitcher by the ears…” she whispered silently, as Bill spoke the words out loud and drew a sword from the scabbard round his waist. It had been a masterstroke to cast him as Mercutio, even if he was a little older than the rest of the cast and a little wooden in his acting.

  “My dad told me that the new Lord Stanton has been away fighting on the Peninsular.”

  Harriet frowned. She had assembled her cast for the scene in the schoolroom, but inevitably, given Bill’s presence in the play, some of the younger more impressionable boys of the village had sneaked in to watch.

  Normally she would give them a drubbing down and usher them out of the door, but what they were saying was far too interesting to stop listening to. Harriet let out a short sigh. She really should have been thinking about ways in which to sell the dratted lace.

  “Well my da said that he had been commended for bravery by Wellington, no less.”

  She had read about that in the out-of-date London weekly Agatha had brought back from the vicarage. It had been quite a surprise. Two years of silence and then suddenly he had appeared on the front pages. That wasn’t the only article on him that followed. More editions of the journal excitedly covered the news that Lord Stanton was back in London and attending the ton balls. That should have meant that he was coming back to Brambridge, that she would see him again. Not for another six months did he return.

  Damn the man.

  “Did I do it right?”

  “Pardon?” Harriet looked up from her book. Bill gazed bemusedly at the wooden sword that pointed towards the ground. Benjamin, the sixteen-year-old playing Tybalt, gripped his sword with two hands and held it in front of him as if hanging on to it for dear life.

  “Did I hit him right with the sword?” asked Benjamin again.

  Harriet wondered where the last five minutes had gone. But she hadn’t really needed to have watched to have seen how the scene had played out. They had practiced it ten times before and each time it seemed like the sword had dominated Benjamin rather than the other way round. Although he was good at the disclaiming and emotion, the physical act of swinging the sword seemed to terrify him.

  She stood and held out her hand. Perhaps it was time to try a different method of persuading Benjamin that he could use the sword convincingly.

  Reluctantly Benjamin handed over his wooden sword.

  “’Ere Samuel. Look what Miss Harriet is doing.” Harriet shut out the voices from the back of the room and took the sword loosely in her right hand. She closed her eyes briefly, and channeled the many romantic novels that she had read.

  “Stand side on,” she said, pushing the sword out in front of her, tip up. “You don’t want to give much of your body as a target to your opponent.” She brushed the hair impatiently from her eyes with her left hand. Bill frowned at her. She dropped her hand and knocked lightly at his sword with her own, pushing it upwards. “Look determined, after all, you are about to attempt to kill a man.”

  Bill’s eyebrows flew upwards, and he took a step back. The boys at the back laughed. Harriet advanced a step. “Keep the weight on the back foot so
that you can advance and retreat as well as swivel.” She took another step forward. Bill dropped his sword.

  “I am for you,” Harriet cried and with a yell, swung her sword at Bill. In surprise Bill jumped back, just missing the schoolroom wall and Harriet’s sword. Harriet crabbed backwards and then forwards again with her arm swinging.

  “Come on, Bill,” she said under her breath. “Your words.” Bill parried her swing with the middle of his sword.

  “What do you mean, words?” Bill muttered, trying to move behind a bank of desks away from the onslaught of Harriet’s sword. “Mercy?”

  “No,” she panted. “Mercutio’s words.” She thrust the sword forwards as Bill bent his massive form at the middle to avoid the skewering thrust.

  “Err, come sir, your passado,” he said, panting.

  “Louder,” Harriet yelled.

  “I’m not saying it any louder,” Bill protested. “There are people watching.”

  “That’s the point.” Harriet skipped round the desks, but halted suddenly as her skirts became trapped.

  “Come, sir, your passado,” a voice hissed menacingly behind her. Harriet tugged at her skirts, whirling with her sword as she did so. James’ muscular chest confronted her, as he lightly balanced a wooden sword in his hand and one of his gleaming boots firmly planted itself on the hem of her skirt. Even in the light of the day, his figure held a dark allure. He had obviously picked up one of the spare props. James glanced over her shoulder and made a beckoning motion with his free arm. Harriet looked behind. Bill grinned at her, and lanced his sword over her shoulder to where James caught it.

  “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size, Harriet?” James said softly.

  “My own size?” Harriet exclaimed with disbelief. “Get off my skirt.” She narrowed her eyes. “I’m sorry, get off my skirt, Lord Stanton.” She frowned and hesitated as pain passed fleetingly across James’ face.

  He lifted both of the swords and pointed their tips at Harriet. He took a step back and released the hem of her dress. “In a swordfight it is always best to go in armed with two knives. It means you have twice as much cutting power.” He swung the swords in an arc inwards.

  In the same motion that Bill had made earlier, Harriet jumped backwards with a squawk. She hadn’t come across this in the romantic novels. Normally the hero vanquished the villain in fifteen sentences of one-armed combat.

  “What are you going to do now, Harriet? Kick me in the shins?” James raised his swords again.

  “You didn’t did you, Harry? Not again.” Bill exclaimed behind her. Harriet had regularly kicked both Bill and James in the shins when she was younger and they didn’t do what she wanted. But that had been when she was fourteen and —

  The nape of Harriet’s neck prickled with heat. James persisted in treating her like a child. She hadn’t been a child since he’d left her on that beach with the tide coming in and no route of escape except to follow the path into the mine. Six hours it had taken her to find her way out in the pitch black.

  “I’ve read what they said about you in the circulars,” Harriet said in a low voice. “They call you the Killer Lord. What did you do, James? How many did you kill?”

  James’ face blanched and he dropped the swords slightly. Without waiting for his response, Harriet reversed her grip on the handle of her sword and with a stabbing motion, pinioned him in the side. She nodded at Benjamin and straightened her back.

  “And that is how Tybalt kills Mercutio, when Mercutio doesn’t expect it, with a stab under Romeo’s arm.” Embarrassment flooded her and she refused to look at James. It had been a low blow.

  “And that is why I asked you to pick on someone your own size,” James murmured behind her.

  Harriet’s neck was still rather hot. The crowd at the back of the room had grown larger.

  “That’s Lord Stanton, that is.”

  “Miss Harriet just skewered the new lord.”

  “Bet he ain’t too happy about that.”

  Reluctantly, Harriet turned and put out a hand for James’ swords. “Rehearsal over,” she said in a loud voice. “Time to go home.”

  “But we’ve got half an hour left,” Benjamin protested.

  James placed the swords into Harriet’s outstretched hand. “Better do as the lady says before you get stabbed yourself.”

  Harriet waited patiently but still James did not release the swords. Her ears burned as the room laughed at James’ comment. She steeled herself and looked up. James’ dark hair had fallen over one of his green eyes, and the dim light from the windows cast shadows from the sharp planes of his cheekbones. He looked like every hero she had read about. The hero she had imagined nightly in her dreams. Despite him not coming back for her, Harriet had thought of James every day for the last two years. Her breathing deepened as anticipation flooded through her.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to kick me in the shins?” James let go of the swords. She caught them with a fumble as they fell to the floor.

  Damn the man. Her heroes had not spoken like that. If at all.

  At least he had called her a lady and not a girl.

  CHAPTER 6

  James left the schoolhouse and rode slowly towards the Fountain Inn, his hand lightly touching his stomach beneath the fine linen of his shirt. An unexpected wave of warm familiarity washed over him. He had known just a split second before Harriet had pinned him with the wooden sword that she was going to do something unexpected. It was the look that she got in her eye, an indescribable widening that warned of unspeakable consequences.

  He gazed out into the distance across fields of corn rippling in the breeze. A low wall separated them from fields of dull brown. Brambridge Manor fields. The golden corn belonged to Lord Anglethorpe. What in the blazes had he done in order to get his crops to grow? Nudging Scorpius into a trot, he headed back towards the Fountain Inn.

  Entering the tap room was not the same noisy affair as when James had left. The room was empty, apart from Bill, who sat quietly in the corner.

  “Hello, James. Or should I say Lord Stanton?” Bill straightened and kicked a stool out with his foot. “Come and sit down.”

  Taking off his coat, James loosened his cravat and, sitting on the stool, put an elbow on the table. “Thank you.”

  “Two years it has been, James, and nary a word. Where have you been?”

  “In the army, at Waterloo, at Salamanca, wherever there was fighting.”

  Bill arched an eyebrow. “I thought you were more interested in the stars than fighting.”

  “The small matter of a murdered riding officer changed that.”

  Bill grunted and sat. “Aye. I know. The Rocket dropped you in Calais, remember. You were a wreck. I thought you were going to remain at that tavern. You seemed to be prospering there.”

  “Somehow the authorities found out about me. Those first three months were… formative.” James winced. “I learnt a bit about fighting, hand to hand. And then someone called the Hawk contacted me through our old friend Renard. Said England needed me. Asked me to join the Tenth Hussars as a scout.”

  Bill nodded and sighed. “I know the Hawk. Can’t get away from him. Granwich too.”

  “Granwich? Who’s Granwich?”

  “You’ve not met Granwich?” Bill tapped his fingers on the table. “Have you ever met Harding… or even the Hawk?”

  James shook his head. “I’ve been too busy hiding in bushes and galloping around armies.” It hadn’t left a lot of time for socializing. He had just kept his head down and done what he had been told to do.

  “Interesting.”

  “Interesting?”

  “Interesting. I need a drink. Ned? Ned! A pint of your best please.”

  The short, portly figure of the landlord who had greeted James a few nights ago bustled over.

  “Well lads, this be a pretty scene. I think Lord Stanton has something on you now, Bill, even if you do look like the spit of each other.”

  “You knew who
I was? Why didn't you say?” James brushed his hair out of his eyes. It was becoming a damn nuisance.

  “Err. I. Well. Pint of bitter was it?”

  James nodded. Ned trotted back to behind the bar and, with hurried movements, started to fill two pints.

  “Do you know what Brambridge has gone through since you left?” Bill stretched and cocked his head to one side. A large paw appeared on the table. “Down, Brutus.” Bill clicked his tongue and the paw disappeared. James stood and peered over the table. The enormous head of a wolfhound gazed back at him from the gloom under the seat.

  “He’s new,” James said, sitting back down gingerly. Soldiers he weren’t afraid of. Large animals with many teeth were something else. He couldn’t count the number of farmsteads he had vaulted through chased by something on a chain.

  “You’ve a lot to catch up on.”

  “I’ve noticed. My—” Dammit but how could he phrase it now? “Stanton estates do not seem to be prospering.”

  Bill snorted. “The only thing that is doing well is Harriet’s school.”

  “She always liked her books.”

  Bill nodded. “Yes. But she works for a pittance. Don’t know how she did it but she persuaded Edgar that Brambridge needed a dame school. I think she told him that the more the children were happy, the more lace they would produce.”

  She had, had she? Harriet was nothing like the old, uneducated ladies who normally ran dame schools, their service more a glorified child care operation than a seat of any real learning. “Who pays her?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve seen Edgar hand her some money on occasion. I think he likes her to be beholden to him.”

  “That sounds like my cousin.” Indeed it did, much more than the concerned man who had greeted him in the drawing room.

  Bill nodded. “Your father started laying off workers on the land as the crops turned bad. He got Edgar to turn them away. Then the mine started failing. Now the village is mostly unemployed, and the young people have started leaving to go to the bigger towns where there is employment. But even there they starve because no one looks out for them.”