Through some fortuitous miracle—divine intervention?—my life settled into a far smoother routine than I had dared anticipate. Perhaps it was the strong common sense and powerful influence of Mr. Tremaine, combined with my hard-earned adaptability, but tensions in Lady Vanessa’s apartments eased to tolerable, and we began to set a pattern for our daily interaction. I even managed—after only three days of suffering wilting temperatures—to drop a hint to Mr. Tremaine that the army in Spain had discovered the debilitating effects of heat. And that I truly believed Lady Vanessa would be better served by less coal in the grate and by breathing fresh seabreezes, available by simply opening a window.
He gave me a long look, his dark eyes questioning, and then he nodded. That was all it took. He did not consult Lady Vanessa or Miss Scruggs. He simply laid less coal on the fire and ignored his employer’s protests when, on a particularly fine day, he opened the casement windows, tying them in place so only an inch of space separated the two sides.
Clever, very clever, was “our Davy.” And, I thought rather too smugly, so was I. There was also a certain warmth in suspecting I had found yet another friend at Moorhead Manor.
Each day I read a chapter of Pride and Prejudice out loud. We talked of India, of life in Portugal and Spain. I touched on the hardships as well as the brighter moments, though carefully avoiding the horrors I could never speak of to anyone. Once or twice, I felt that Mr. Tremaine was steering my words in that dark direction—perhaps believing tales of persons worse off than herself would take Lady Vanessa’s mind off her own woes—but I could not do it.
I did, however, enjoy looking at her sketchbook. Her portraits of the residents of Moorhead Manor were sharply delineated, sometimes almost to the point of caricature. The flowers she reproduced from the bouquets brought to her room were so perfectly detailed they might have illustrated a botanical text. And her embroidery put me to shame. Upon discovering my ineptitude, she gleefully determined to torture me by giving me lessons for an hour after the lunch we shared each day in her sitting room.
In return, I admitted to my one and only talent, a repertoire of songs, mostly simple songs of the people I had acquired over the years. Lady Vanessa seemed more calm when I sang, so music also became part of our daily routine.
And then there were the quiet moments when we sat by her window and looked out at the gardens and beyond to the rolling hills that marked the beginning of Exmoor. Though frequently obscured by mist, it was beautiful country, offering myriad shades of green, yellow, and gold, backed by pure blue sky dotted with scudding white clouds. Lady Vanessa had sketched every aspect of the view from the windows of her corner room, and I made a mental note to use her need for fresh material for her drawings to prod her downstairs and out the door. But that time had not yet come. A scant fortnight’s acquaintance did not give me leave to upset my lady’s ingrained habits. Or her fears.
My “half-day,” I’d been informed by Mrs. Linnell, would be Thursday afternoons—the time appointed for Lady Vanessa’s weekly visit from Dr. Biggs—and my services would not be needed. On the day I first experienced those glorious hours of freedom, I was torn by indecision. The cliffs or the stables? As leery as I was of the ocean, it fascinated me. The danger called to me—not only the precipitous drop from the rocky cliffs but the surging power of the surf, whose booming crashes against the rocks could clearly be heard from my bedchamber window. But I had grown up with horses, horses, horses, and the men who rode them as if they were one entity. And right there, in the midst of recalling glorious moments of the cavalry on parade, I was hit by the sick anguish of hearing the barrage of pistol shots when our men had been forced to slaughter their mounts because there was not room enough on the ships sent to evacuate us from Corunna and they could not be left for the use of the French.
A half hour of my half-day squandered as I sat on my bed, fighting nausea, combating memories I had ruthlessly banished, hoping never to encounter them again. Yet in the end, I chose the stables. And did not regret it. Clearly, the Earl of Hycliffe had a fine eye for horseflesh. One chestnut stallion, an Arabian, captured my attention.
“Zeus, Lord Exmere’s beast,” I was told by Dobbins, the stablemaster. Ah. I associated the name with the face Lady Vanessa had captured in her sketchbook. Lord Hycliffe’s elder son and heir. Tossing curls, laughing eyes, a devil-may-care expression that could be the model for every care-for-nobody young nobleman in England. The perfect frivol, who lived for any shallow pursuit that might alleviate the boredom of being young, titled, wealthy, and having nothing better to do with his time.
But if Lord Exmere could ride Zeus . . . perhaps the viscount had at least one virtue.
Before my second half-day, I was summoned to the earl’s study, where I dutifully made my report. I did not add that under the circumstances I considered anything short of blood pooling on his daughter’s carpet to be progress. He merely nodded, as if nothing I had to say was new to him. Very likely it was not.
“I hear you have been visiting the stables,” he said.
“Yes, my lord. Your horses are of superior stock, and I am enjoying making their acquaintance. There is even enough time for me to visit them while my lady takes her daily nap.”
“Would you care to ride? I understand you have developed a fondness for old Bess, and goodness knows she grows fat from too little exercise.”
The unimaginatively named Bess had been his wife’s horse, Dobbins told me, and the thought of the earl offering her to me fair took my breath away. The stablemaster had also informed me that Lady Vanessa’s horse had suffered a broken leg and been put down immediately after her fall. Except for a mare kept for stud, all the other horses in the earl’s stables were stallions or geldings, untrained to a ladies’ saddle.
“My lord . . . truly?” I whispered, eyes wide.
“Truly,” he responded with the smile he so seldom exercised. “I will see that Dobbins polishes up the sidesaddle.”
Freedom! Freedom to explore. To once again feel the wind on my face, experience the glory of seeing the world from a height, the power of four strong legs pounding the earth beneath me . . .
But I would be alone. No Papa, no Mama, no regiment. Just myself and my memories.
The next step in grieving, I acknowledged. I would ride alone and learn to consider it normal. And I would be grateful for this favor. After all, the earl could have thought, My daughter’s companion ride my wife’s horse? Absurd!
“Thank you, my lord.” I dropped a deep curtsy and returned to my duties. I could scarcely wait for my next half-day.
Thursday afternoons, however, were not my only opportunity for freedom. Miss Scruggs was as firm a believer in a rigid schedule as the females who ruled a traditional English nursery. Lady Vanessa napped from two to four every afternoon, which gave me two blessed hours to do as I pleased. One day, when the sky was only slightly overcast and the mists trapped in some underground lair—or so my imagination fancied—I made my way down the lane to where the coach had dropped me at the side of the road.
Oh. My. On the morning after my arrival, I discovered my room looked out over rolling lawn and occasional stubby trees to the vast expanse of the ocean. But up close it was almost overpowering. The distance from the coaching road to the cliffs was a good forty or fifty yards, but I inched forward, testing the ground with each step. The cliffs might look as if they were made of solid rock, but both Mrs. Linnell and Allard, the butler, had warned me they were treacherous and not to go too near the edge. But curiosity got the better of me, the boom of the surf luring me on until, at last, I could see the waves crashing against an irregular barricade of jagged rocks at the base of the cliffs.
This then was what I could hear each night when all was quiet—the inexorable rhythm of the sea attempting to cut a path inland, swallowing the road, the house . . .
My imagination would be the death of me yet.
It occurred to me those precipitous heights would be a very bad place to come over faint. Not that I was subject to fainting spells, but . . .
I backed up, cutting off my view of the rocks that jutted out of the sea like the teeth of a great sea monster. And then I was running back to the road, down the lane, slowing my pace only when a stitch in my side and lack of breath forced me to a halt. Hands on hips, I glared at the landscape around me. I had grown soft since the Peninsula, become a town bloom all too quickly wilted by physical challenges. I must walk more often, ride whenever I could. And I would return to the cliffs on a regular basis, until the threat of danger, coupled with bad memories had been conquered by the sheer beauty of the rugged Devon coastline.
On the following Thursday, I set off on my first ride with what I suspected was the same eager anticipation experienced by the great Portuguese and Spanish explorers setting off to find new worlds. I was riding high, on horseback for the first time since those last days in France. And, yes, the moment was bittersweet, though I quickly tamed my thoughts to the good moments only. I would not be melancholy on my first ride in months.
I soon discovered that although the land along the coast was windswept, it was not as barren as the heart of Exmoor. Most of the fields had been harvested, the land lying fallow, but it was clear that crops could be grown here. And when I came across a large and clearly well-tended farmhouse, barn, and outbuildings, I wondered if I had found the home farm and the family that had produced Mr. David Tremaine.
A fine-looking woman of fifty-some years looked up from where she was gathering an armload of herbs in the kitchen garden. “Good morrow, miss,” she said with a broad smile. “You’d be Miss Ballantyne, I suspect.”
“I am,” I replied with an answering smile. “Have I found the home farm?”
“You have indeed, and our Davy has told us all about you. He says you’re a ray of sunshine cutting through the fog. A bright face long needed in those gloomy halls.”
I suspected I was going to like Mrs. Tremaine as much as her son. She bawled a word in the direction of the barn, and two men soon emerged, both the image of David Tremaine—though one was clearly old enough to be his father, the other likely a brother. “So you’ve found us, have you?” the elder boomed. “Come in, come in, and try m’wife’s cider. A fine remedy for a parched throat on warm autumn day.”
Their hospitality was not to be denied, nor did I wish to. These were good people, and friends were always welcome. Besides, my curiosity was piqued. I needed to know more about the strong, dynamic young man who seemed willing to devote his life to an invalid.
I returned to Moorhead Manor convinced that David Tremaine had basically sacrificed the normal life of a young man of prosperous family in order to become a beast of burden, and sometime whipping boy, for Lady Vanessa Wetherington. Why? His mother had made no secret of it. “Infatuated, now wasn’t he?” she declared before heaving a dramatic sigh. “Off he went without a ‘by your leave.’ Leaving us short-handed.”
“Sends his wages to pay for help, now doesn’t he?” his older brother cut in. “Fair-minded our Davy, even if we think he’s dicked in the nob.”
I was hard put to find responses to these confidences, my mind soaring with this sudden influx of knowledge. Each day I was finding myself more and more in sympathy with David Tremaine and less certain that the great class divide should keep him from his love. If indeed Lady Vanessa was his love. Though I had to admit I could not see how he could still be dazzled by the sour, petulant young woman Lady Vanessa had become.
It was a full hour before I once again mounted Bess and, following directions given my Mrs. Tremaine, trotted through a cleft in the rolling hills until I came to an imposing mansion, a structure far closer to what the name Moorhead Manor had originally brought to mind. The home of Thomas Ridgeway and family, Mrs. Tremaine had told me, adding on a whisper, “’Tis his brother, the nabob, who ran away with Lady Hycliffe. Five years ago, it was. A great scandal. Earl’s become a recluse, poor man, and who can blame him?”
She had also added another warning, which I had trouble heeding on this lovely, unusually sunny day. “Don’t go no farther than the Ridgeways, miss. Beyond is the most treacherous part of the moor, and no place for a unwary stranger. Bad things have happened there, and not just sum’n lost in a bog. Only a few months back, the miller’s daughter was found lying at the foot of a tor. Some said she put a foot wrong when she climbed, others swore she was strangled. Whatever it was, miss, leave the moor to those who was born and bred here.”
Such dark thoughts when the comfortable-looking manor house of stone, timber, and stucco gleamed in the late afternoon sun, looking totally benign. Suddenly feeling like a Peeping Tom, I turned Bess and headed home, my head ringing with all I had learned in one afternoon’s ride. David Tremaine and Lady Vanessa, the warmth of the Tremaine family, the scandal of Lady Hycliffe and Mr. Ridgeway’s brother, a death on the moor. The army had its share of gossip, but somehow I had not expected quite so much of it in the wilds of North Devon.
Nor did I expect the reception that awaited me when I joined Lady Vanessa for late afternoon tea, which I looked forward to with great eagerness as Cook always prepared scones with the rich cream for which Devonshire was famous. And jam tarts, fairy cakes, or perhaps macaroons to ensure we did not fade away before dinner at seven. After my first ride in months, I was famished, though I suspected not even a long, soaking bath would relieve the muscles that were bound to scream at me in the morning.
The bath would have to wait, however. I washed myself as best I could, changed into a gown of dark blue muslin, and hastened into Lady Vanessa’s sitting room, where the tea tray was already laid out. Her voice, rising loud and shrill, cut through my apologies for being late.
“You rode Bess! My mother’s horse. How could you? And how dare you flaunt yourself before me, riding like the wind, when you know I am tied to this chair, forever maimed by a horse. Insensitive dolt! Get out of my sight!”
Absurdly, my first thought was that I had walked Bess out of the stables and returned at the same pace. Riding like the wind was hyperbole of the first order.
I pictured the view from her window. Yes, it was possible she had caught a distant glimpse of me as I put the mare to the gallop and flew down the road to the home farm, my spirits soaring as they had not in many months.
And then the full impact of her anger struck me and I could only stare. Mr. Tremaine had pulled Lady Vanessa’s chair backwards, wheeling it around until her back was toward me. His head was bent to hers, clearly scolding. Her arms flew up, pummeling him in frantic movements that seemed to have no focus. Indeed, I’d swear her eyes were closed. Miss Scruggs never moved, seemingly as frozen as I.
Surely Lady Vanessa could not expect me to give up riding—the thought was somehow sickening. I had not fully realized how much I’d needed the freedom of being on horseback once again until the possibility of losing that privilege loomed.
And yet as Lady Vanessa’s companion, I should not do something that upset her so greatly.
She was quiet now, her head bowed, hands in her lap. David Tremaine, looking down at her, had not lost his scowl. Interesting. He might care for her, but he was far from blind to her faults. I stepped forward. “I beg your pardon, Lady Vanessa,” I said, “but Lord Hycliffe, knowing I had spent much of my life on horseback, offered your mother’s mare for me to ride. He said Bess was the only horse trained to the sidesaddle. Otherwise, I assure you I never would have presumed to ride her.”
When she offered no reply, I added, “I am most sincerely sorry if I have upset you. I will make every effort to keep out of your sight the next time I ride.”
At that, her head jerked up, eyes once again blazing with anger. “You are a paid companion, yet you defy my wishes.”
Alas, being a daughter of the regiment was not easily put aside. I bit back the hot words on the tip of my tongue, while telling myself I was employed by the Earl of Hycliffe who wished me to add a bit of spirit to his household. The struggle was intense, and once again David Tremaine became the peacekeeper.
“Miss Ballantyne has but one half-day a week, my lady. I think you must grant her the right to spend the time as she pleases. And you know quite well poor old Bess has been doing nothing but eating and growing fat. It’s high time someone exercised her.”
A remarkable young man. Though once again I wondered at his alleged attraction to Lady Vanessa.
Silence reigned, tense and uncomfortable. I tried to imagine myself a young subaltern in the regiment, forced by military discipline to follow orders he could not like. I swept toward the tea table, sank into my usual embroidered chintz chair, and said, “Would you like me to pour today, my lady?”
His eyes steely, Mr. Tremaine turned Lady Vanessa’s chair and pushed it close to the table. One glance at her continued pout and he offered, “An excellent idea, Miss Ballantyne. I think we could all benefit from a good cup of tea.”
He had power over her, I had to grant him that. Without further ado, she accepted the cup of tea I poured and raised it to her lips. I avoided looking at her as I poured tea for the rest of us and doled out scones and cream. We ate in silence, each aware of who had won the Battle of Penelope’s Ride. And it wasn’t Lady Vanessa. Nor was it I.