That night she lay awake in the mulberry-draped bed, staring up at the golden tassels that moved in the breeze from the open window. She could see the sky above the dark mass of Lady-wood, the stars bright and as clear as cut diamonds, but there was no moon. Tamsin had warned her that tonight the smugglers would go through the woods to the bay. Moonless nights were always good for their activities, for the revenue men would not see so easily, nor would Sir Francis’ gamekeepers who were out watching for poachers.
The single bray of a donkey made her sit up. Gathering her dressing gown around her she slipped from the bed and tiptoed past Tamsin’s little bed on the landing. The stairs creaked as she descended, but then from the kitchen window she could look out across the orchard toward the path into Ladywood.
The donkeys moved slowly, black shapes of no depth, and silent but for that one earlier sound. The men were as indistinct as the beasts they led, and she found she was holding her breath until the last donkey had vanished through the break in the old wall and into Francis’ woods.
She knew her next action was foolish but she could not help herself. Quietly she unbolted the door and went out into the cool night air. The wind rustled the trees and somewhere an owl called. The stars winked and flashed and the air was full of the scent of roses. Beneath the apple trees the grass was damp, dragging at her night clothes as she walked beside the path toward the opening into Ladywood.
The trees stretched beyond the boundary of her land, their leaves whispering secretly and the air wafting more coolly from depths of the wood, as if rushing up from the foam of the waves on the distant beach. She could see the path running straight until the deep shadows swallowed it.
For a moment she hesitated, for to go on would be more than the height of foolishness, yet curiosity pushed her to follow the smugglers who so brazenly used her land to come and go. She stepped over the crumbling, fallen stones of the wall and she was in Ladywood.
She had not seen the horse. It was tethered close to a holly tree, its dark glossy coat mingling with the shadows so well as to make it almost invisible. It was the slight jingle of its harness that caught her ear so that she froze, her hand in the very act of brushing aside a low-hanging branch.
She heard the shouts from deep in the woods, and through the tangle of trunks and branches she could vaguely see bobbing lights. Hounds began to bay and the donkeys brayed nervously. Jessica stared, her eyes round and her heart thumping. She turned, stumbling back towards the gap in the wall, but there was a sharp click and she was brought to an abrupt standstill as her trailing hem set off a trap. The fierce metal teeth closed over the folds of material and she was caught.
With a cry of dismay she crouched to try to drag the ugly teeth apart, but it would not budge. Desperately she struggled with it, trying to lift the trap itself, but it had been chained to a tree and she was held fast. Her only escape would be to remove her clothes. She looked toward the bobbing lights, they were coming nearer now and she could hear men running towards her.
The horse whinnied nervously and she turned. A man in a heavy cloak was untethering it. Jessica shrank into the shadows but he had seen her. He came quickly over and she stared at him. “Sir Nicholas?”
Philip’s brother glanced up from the knife he had drawn. “Miss Durleigh,” he said, his polite, disciplined voice so out of place in the alarm of the moment. The knife cut through her skirts like a flame through butter and she was free.
He pushed her roughly towards the path. “Get back to Applegarth, and be quick about it.” The noise was redoubled in the woods and a pistol was fired. Nicholas frowned, his dark face reminding her poignantly of his dead brother. “God curse Varangian,” he muttered, seizing his horse’s reins.
And then he was gone, mounting the nervous beast and urging it along the path into Applegarth. She followed, watching with a mixture of amazement and anger as he rode thoughtlessly across the few vegetables that Tamsin had planted beneath the apple trees.
Gathering her cut, soiled skirts she ran toward the cottage, throwing open the door and shutting it quickly, pushing the bolts across firmly. Tamsin hurried down the stairs in her voluminous white gown, a nightcap set at an angle on her plaited brown hair.
“Miss Jess? ...”
“Hush, Tamsin. Look, there they are!” Jessica pointed through the window at the men running from Ladywood. They ran swiftly, their bodies bent. There was no sign of the donkeys, but the lights bobbing through the trees were closer than ever and the hounds were giving deep voice as they pursued the smugglers.
“Miss Jess, you didn’t go out there?”
Jessica nodded rather shamefacedly, for she could not understand her own foolishness.
“After all I’d warned you!”
“Shh. Look.”
At the edge of Ladywood the lights had halted. They could see the men’s faces by the light of the lanterns and how hard it was to control the straining hounds that still sought to follow the scent. A man on horseback appeared behind the others, moving slowly through the gap in the wall into Applegarth. He controlled the nervous horse expertly, and Jessica had no trouble in recognizing Francis.
She held her breath as he stared toward the cottage. Would he come to the door? She brushed her skirts nervously, for although she could remove the stains, how could she conceal the great cut where Nicholas Woodville’s knife had freed her?
Then Francis turned back to his men and they melted back into Ladywood, the lights gradually vanishing among the trees. Only the constant sound of the hounds told that they were there.
Tamsin lowered the blue and white curtain and turned to Jessica. “Whatever possessed you, Miss Jess?”
“I don’t know, and that’s a fact. I saw them going in and felt the urge to follow. Oh, don’t say it again, Tamsin, for I know I should not have done it!”
“But what happened to your clothes? Did they catch you then?”
“No. No, I stepped against a trap and it caught my hem.” Jessica stared at the sliced-through cloth.
“Then how did you get free?”
“Sir Nicholas Woodville freed me.”
“Sir Nicholas? But what were he doing there?” Tamsin stared at the window as if seeing into Ladywood.
“I don’t know. His horse was tethered just inside Francis’ lands, and he seemed in a veritable anger about Francis’ men falling on the smugglers.” She glanced at Tamsin as she realized what she was thinking.
“Miss Jess, do you think Sir Nicholas be the leader of the smugglers?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. He was there, certainly.”
“Well, I never. They reckon hereabouts that someone of the gentry must be leading the ring, but no one outside the ring itself is in the know. But Sir Nicholas Woodville?—that be a hard pill to swallow, him being so upright and strict to the letter of the law. A right turn-up that would be, and no mistake.”
“We don’t know that that was why he was there, Tamsin, so don’t go jumping to any conclusions.”
“Oh, I shall say nothing. I’m no daft curmudgeon to go sounding my tongue foolishly. Nonetheless, ‘tis a strange happening, a real strange happening.”
“Tamsin, let us have another pot of your excellent Formosa tea.”
“Reckon us’ll sleep ‘till noon tomorrow.”
“It doesn’t matter if we do.”
“That’s true enough,”
The kettle was singing happily on the range when Tamsin set the pretty blue and white crockery on the table. “Miss Jess, did you see the Woodville coach earlier?”
“Coming down from Varangian? Yes. Rosamund was in it.”
“Ah, that’s what I were coming to. ‘Tis whispered, only whispered, mind, that Miss Rosamund do have her heart on her sleeve for Sir Francis.”
Jessica stopped toying with her spoon and looked up swiftly. “How much of a whisper is it?”
“That’s neither here nor there, if ‘tis a whisper then ‘tis suspect. She do spend some time over there, and that’s no whisper. Mind, I’ve always thought it were Sir Francis as she loved, and never Master Philip, but her folks wanted the Woodville marriage and anyway, Sir Francis had his heart set on you.”
“Your instincts are nearly always right, Tamsin, and if you think she has always loved Francis then I am prepared to believe that it is so. But does Francis love her?”
“Him? I doubt that if he did he would let her know. First off she were Master Philip’s wife, and now only recently widowed. He’d not make so low as to express his feelings one way or the other. He’m a gentleman through and through, a proper gentleman, not like some others as come to mind.”
Jessica flushed. “The kettle’s boiling.”
“Ah,” muttered Tamsin enigmatically.
The kettle’s lid was rattling as steam billowed out. The tea hissed pleasingly in the silver teapot and Tamsin sat down while it brewed.
“Miss Jess, I know as it’s none of my concern, but now seems as good a time as any to say what’s on my mind. Sir Francis loved you once, and today at the Feathers it seemed to me he was still smitten. Perhaps it was just his way, but nonetheless, that’s how it looked. Now, Miss Rosamund loved him those years ago when you jilted him for Master Philip. She saw Sir Francis hurt by you and she saw her own husband desert her for you. As if that weren’t enough, you now come back to Henbury and already you’ve been talking with Francis again. She’ll see you as a threat all over again. I beg of you, Miss Jess, stay well away from her, for any meeting ‘twixt the two of you will only be painful—and you’m the one as’ll be hurt the most for she’ve got right on her side. You didn’t then and you haven’t now.”
“But I don’t want Francis.”
“It don’t matter what you want now, it’s how she’s going to see it that counts.”
“Two years is a long time, isn’t it?” Jessica’s green eyes were dark in the light of the candle Tamsin had set on the table.
“Well, less’n you want to go to the poorhouse, Miss Jess, two years is what you must live here for. The sooner it passes the better for all concerned. Now then, drink this and then we can get us back upstairs to bed.” Tamsin frowned at the cut hem again. “That great, foolish man, cutting it like that. It be spoiled beyond redemption!”
Jessica sipped the tea, thinking of what Tamsin had told her and thinking, too, about the strange affair of Sir Nicholas Woodville and the smugglers.