Burning Bright (Brambridge Novel 2) (12 page)

Harriet flexed her hand on the wooden sword. Good? If Melissa hadn’t been clear about her intentions before, she was now. She meant to pursue James.

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to finish clearing up.”

Melissa looked surprised. “Oh, I am sorry, I hadn’t realized.”

She hadn’t realized? Even though the debris from the rehearsal was plainly littered behind Harriet? Harriet nodded and turned back into the dark schoolroom, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She could not compete with Melissa. Even the faintest hope that had burned slightly in her heart extinguished silently.

Harriet threw all the props into a large box at the back of the school room. With a grunt of frustration, she shoved the heavy box with her feet back against the wall.

“Have you had any more time to consider my proposal?”

Blinking, Harriet turned back to the doorway. All the light had been blocked from the room. Bill’s shoulders filled the gap. She stamped back to the door and, with a forefinger, pointed at Bill’s chest and then at the school garden. Bill threw his hands up and laughed.

“I know I only asked you a few days ago.” He backed slowly into the sunlight of the small yard.

“That’s right, and we have struck a bargain.”

“There’s no need to be so dramatic about it, Harry, you only need to say yes or no.”

“I still need time to think.”

Bill raised his eyebrows. “What is there to think about? We both come from Brambridge, we like each other and we’re both not getting any younger.”

“I’m not that old.”

“Most of the girls in Brambridge are paired up by the time they are sixteen. You’re very much past that.”

“Most of the girls in Brambridge have already experienced your form of romance as well,” Harriet said tartly.

Bill smiled. “It’s not my fault they find me irresistible.”

Harriet blinked. Bill was like a large handsome bear. And she felt absolutely no attraction to him whatsoever.

“Come here and let me show you.” Bill grinned and opened his arms wide and then stilled. “Don’t move,” he whispered.

Harriet froze. Bill reached out a hand towards her hair and she flinched. He hummed slightly at her to make her stay still.

“Got you,” he whispered again, plucking with surprisingly deft fingers at one of her curls. Harriet stood very still as he waved his fingers in front of her eyes. Harriet couldn’t stop the moan that came from her lips. In Bill’s fingers sat a very large and fat spider. He thrust it towards her and she put out her fingers in supplication. He knew she hated spiders. James had told him out of spite one day in a rare fit of rage when yet again he had had to rescue her from a scrape.

“Please… I…”

Bill laughed softly and walked away to put the spider safely on a gatepost.

“So why me?” Harriet couldn’t resist calling after him.

“Why what you?” Bill poked at the spider to make him move.

Harriet had a sudden vision of what their marriage would be like. She had never had a brother but having observed Janey’s siblings she imagined that life with Bill would be very much like having a little brother. A very annoying little brother.

“Why do you want to marry me when you could have any of the other girls?”

“Those village girls aren’t a patch on you, Harry. You can read and write. I think I’m going to need a woman like you in the future.”

Good grief. This proposal was becoming more and more romantic by the minute.

“There is no need to look so disappointed. It’s the truth,” Bill protested as he walked back towards her. He bent his head and peered into her face.

“You’re not still waiting for
him,
are you?”

Harriet swallowed. “Him who?”

Bill sighed. “That’s the problem with being so dramatic, Harriet. You can’t hide anything. Your face gives you away.”

“No, I really don’t understand what you are talking about.” Harriet took a large gulp of air; it was as if a vice was closing in on her chest.

“He’s not the same man that he was, you know.”

Harriet nodded. There was no point in pretending to not know who he was talking about.

“James has very different priorities now. I’m sorry Harriet. But I think it very unlikely that he will be able to give you what you want.”

Her fingers curled into a fist. Was it so obvious to everyone else that they were unsuited, too? Had James had spoken to Bill about her? She turned away. There was still one last sword to put away in the box.

“I’m the next best thing, Harriet, and you know it.” Bill slammed his fist into his hand. “Dammit, Harry.” His voice softened. “I’ve even been told I look like him. Surely that has to count?”

Harriet paused in the doorway. Her eyes widened in the darkness of the schoolroom. “Perhaps you are right, Bill,” she said softly and she closed her eyes as Bill let out a breath behind her. “But I will still let you know when we return in the
Rocket
to Brambridge.”

Bill’s footsteps crunched on the gravel as he turned and walked away. Harriet winced as he slammed the gate closed.

She couldn’t marry someone knowing that they had always been second best.

CHAPTER 12

The gravel crunched under James’ feet as he strode heavily up the long drive. He wished he’d never gone for a walk, never attempted to escape Brambridge Manor and its scheming inhabitants.

His mind kept returning to the conversation he had just heard. Or more particularly, the poignant silence in the middle of it.

Have you had time to consider my proposal… it’s not my fault they find me irresistible, come here and let me show you…”
And she obviously had, given the lengthy pause that followed. Good God, then she had moaned.

Did she do that with all the men that she kissed? He’d left quickly, back the way he came. James couldn’t listen to any more.

Why had he taken it into his head to see her? Truth be told, it was because the short bursts of time he had with her caused life to spring into color, sparks to course through his veins again. Alone, in the manor, he felt like a shadow, an unfeeling shade amongst many others.

By Zeus, she had rubbed off on him. Look at him, extemporizing like one of her Shakespeare heroes. He stopped and drew a hand over his face. He was tired, so very tired. He had been out every night, ostensibly taking up his old hobby of stargazing, but in fact he had been monitoring the activity up and down the coast. The sometimes very surprising activity.

Should he tell Harriet about her would be fiancé’s amorous night time movements? He licked his lips. No. He would look a fool when they had in reality shared nothing at all.

James started walking again. He hadn’t been quite right since Corunna. Every unexpected touch or noise startled him, turned him quickly to anger.  If only he had a more visible wound like his shoulder or even his leg like Freddie’s. Freddie had gained his on the battlefield whereas James had been holed up in a farmhouse in advance of the troops, still in his role as scout, when an artillery shell had landed straight down on the roof. The house had collapsed in on him. As he lay there, shoulder pinioned by timber, he had gone over again and again the sound of the shell whistling through the air before it hit, the dust raining from the roof, covering his skin.

He had stayed in that position for three days until Freddie had arrived to pull him out.

But Harriet didn’t need to know about that. It wasn’t important. She had protested about waiting two years for him to come back, but in reality she had been building her own life. She had moved on whilst he was still stuck in the past trying to bury his father’s ghost.

James dropped his hand to his side and resumed his approach to the manor door. He could not waste time thinking about her. If he wanted to keep the estate he needed to find Marie Mompesson, whoever she was. There was no record of her anywhere. The Bow Street runner that he’d sent for spent more time in the Prince of Wales Inn drinking with Edgar rather than out searching.

The front door to the manor opened as he stepped up the first of the short steps to the door. Mrs. Sumner exited, followed by his mother and one of the few remaining footmen.

“Dear Lord Stanton, how lovely to see you.”

James bristled, and tensed as Mrs. Sumner caught his arm. This time he was conscious of the anger filling him.

“Your mother and I were just going to visit Mrs. Madely again. Such an interesting woman. I’ve left instructions for a hamper to be packed for you and Melissa for your picnic today. Cecilia has a migraine, I fear.”

James frowned and looked pointedly at where Mrs. Sumner’s hand still rested on his sleeve. She laughed and batted her eyelashes at him, leaving her hand on his sleeve for just a little longer. He clenched his fists. She was acting as if she were in charge of Brambridge Manor, not him. And where on earth had this idea for a picnic come from?

That was why he had had to escape.

“I’m afraid I have another engagement.”

“James, you promised,” his mother protested. James jerked in surprise. It was the most animated that he had seen her in a long time. She had never exerted her authority, especially not when his father was alive.

“Oh look, here comes Melissa now,” Mrs. Sumner said, a triumphant look upon her face. “We must be going, do have a lovely time.”

James stood back to allow the ladies to pass. Melissa came not out of the front door as he expected but from the direction of the overgrown gardens. He sighed. She was a vision of beauty. But her meekness annoyed him. She always did what her mother said.

“Miss Sumner,” he said politely. It didn’t appear she had noticed him.

“Ah, Lord Stanton.” Melissa turned in his direction and started up the steps. “You have lovely gardens, with some beautiful shrubs in them. It is a pity that they have not been tended for a while. You may have lost some roses in the winter, but most of it seems to have survived well.”

James did not care for flowers. They were pretty, but he preferred the night time flowers of the stars. “I understand we are to go for
another
picnic.”

“Are we?” Melissa seemed put out. She gave a sigh. “I will just fetch Cecilia. She is inside somewhere.”

“I understand she has a migraine.”

Melissa frowned. “That’s strange. She seemed fine at breakfast. Well, migraines can come on rather quickly.” Melissa made to start up the steps. “I’ll need to fetch my gloves. Mother will be furious if I don’t wear them.”

James eyed her hands, which Melissa seemed to be thrusting behind her back. She wasn’t quick enough to hide her dirty fingernails.

“I’ll wait five minutes and if you are not here, then I must give you my apologies and continue with my work.”

She nodded and, giving him a wide berth, circled around him and through the front door. Despite her beauty, she certainly did not act like a woman trying to entrap a man.

She was back within minutes. James snorted. He had been wrong. She was eager for his company. She towed the maid behind her.

“Maisie says the hamper is already in the cart.”

James took a last look at the house and set off back down the steps. It was beginning to feel like déjà vu. “And the cart is in the stables?”

Melissa nodded. Out of the corner of his eye, James kept an eye on the maid. He didn’t want her slipping off anywhere. The last time he had taken Melissa on a picnic, he had just caught the maid before she had walked away.

They were out of the stables and onto the cliff tops before they spoke again. The swallows dived and whirled around them as they followed the grassy track to a prominent brow of cliff halfway between Brambridge and Beer, the next village along.

“Pardon my asking, but why are your fingers so dirty?” James needed to break the silence. Despite his dislike of sudden noises, silence was sometimes even worse. It was ominous.

“It’s my interest. Flowers, I mean.” Melissa blushed. “I was looking at one of your lavender bushes, checking its roots. Did you know that lavender can be used to cure all sorts of ailments?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

James relented. “Where did your interest in flowers come from?”

“My father was a botanist. He would return from expeditions with new species. We would look at them together.”

“What happened to him?”

Melissa looked away from James and out to sea. Her gaze snagged on a brown, ugly low lying plant. “Gracious, it is beautiful here, is it not?”

James nodded in reply. She turned to look back at him, her eyes narrowed. “Do you know Miss Beauregard well?”

“Harriet or Agatha?” James said in surprise.

“The schoolmistress. The one who is interested in plays.”

“That would be Harriet.”

Melissa looked at him expectantly.

“We grew up together.”

“Ah.” Melissa seemed to manage to inject a lot of meaning into her exclamation. She laid a hand on his. “Did you know that she—?”

“Lovely day for a walk, isn’t it?” said an overly cheerful voice. Harriet stood at the head of the cart horse holding a large basket full of books.

James swallowed. He looked down at Melissa’s hand still resting on his. Deliberately, he turned his hand over and, lightly grasping Melissa’s wrist, peeled off her glove. Looking down at her dirty fingernails, he shuddered. And then raised the hand to his lips and kissed it.

“Why you…!” James looked back at the head of the pony to see that only a basket remained where Harriet had been. Her small figure stumbled into the distance.

“…believes she loves you,” Melissa finished, looking with horror at the lone basket on the ground.

**

The vicarage in Brambridge was a gothic monstrosity attached to the church. James stood outside, loath to lift the knocker that was shaped as a bronze hand. Every time he thought about kissing Melissa’s hand, he wanted to hang his head. Two days had passed in which he had thrown himself into spending in Honiton and along the coast looking for signs that Marie Mompesson even existed.

Raising his arm slowly, he picked up the knocker between thumb and forefinger and let it fall against the door.