Silence of Scandal

Silence of Scandal

By

Jackie Williams

Cover Art

by

Kellie Dennis at Book Cover by Design

www.bookcoverbydesign.co.uk

All rights reserved.

Copyright©Jackie Williams 2014

No part of this book may be copied, used or lent in any way other than with written permission of the author.

All names, places and incidents are from the imagination of the author. Any resemblance to persons alive or dead is purely co-incidental.

My never ending thanks go to my wonderful daughter. Her continual support and encouragement knows no bounds.

A note from the author.

For ease of reading I have altered the tone and usage of an accent throughout the story as our hero becomes attuned, as happens in real life, to the sound of his wife’s voice.

Prologue

1799

“
How is that cart going to move without the horses? The kettle is surely far too small to create enough steam to move this thing.” Alexander Currurgh waved his hand towards the two wheeled barrow that normally carried the apples from the orchard. It was usually pulled by their oldest horse, Thyme. Now it stood resting on its two wheels with a very strange looking contraption at the front end.

Alexander raised a scornful twelve year old eyebrow. His brother had clearly flipped the coop this time.  “Don’t you recall the ones that drive those engines? We saw them in that mine. They’re huge. The amount of fuel you need to keep the fire running is enormous and we don’t even have a running water supply. Are you sure that you haven’t been at father’s brandy again, Phillip.” Alexander looked up at his elder brother with suspicion and swallowed hard as he remembered the recent late night trip to their father’s study and the fiery amber liquid burning his own throat. He didn’t even want to think about the subsequent spinning head and strange visions he had suffered for two days that made him wish he had never accepted Phillip’s reckless dare.

Phillip looked down his long nose at his slightly shorter sibling. There were only a couple of years between them in age and not a lot in height or build but Phillip gave an extremely superior sniff.

“You haven’t been listening, Alex. This is my first experiment into steam locomotion. I want to see if I can do it myself. Look here, see this pipe from the kettle spout, I’ve sealed the join, and when I release the valve the steam shooting from the kettle will force its way down this pipe to the piston attached to this spoke.’ He indicated a shinier tube of metal that Alexander had seen him guarding for days. “Then with the high pressure steam being forced into the piston, it will turn the wheel.” He scratched his head doubtfully for a moment as he wrinkled his nose at the bits of metal bound together with strips of oiled leather and cloth. “Well, that’s the plan anyway. I’m going to see if this works now and then I should be able to replace the horses by the end of next year, if I can find a kettle big enough.” Phillip explained as though Alexander had never seen an engine before. It was their father’s insistence on letting them see a working mine with steam driven pumping gear that had begun all of Phillip’s experiments. All the noise and machinery had fascinated him.

Alexander had not been nearly so enamoured of all the industry. While he knew about the progression of things he wasn’t entirely happy with such noisy, filthy changes. He looked curiously up at his brother.

“Why do you want to get rid of the horses, Phillip? I don’t think Jennings will be at all happy if you do that. He won’t have a job for a start but apart from that at least the nags are clean, quiet and have several uses. This looks as though it’s going to be hard work and noisy.” Alexander peered at the copper kettle. It looked suspiciously like the one that had hung above the huge stove in the kitchen for many years. The same one that cook had accused Callum the woodsman of removing without permission. Alexander had liked the phrase ‘removing without permission’. He’d remained seated at the kitchen table with a lardy cake halfway to his lips as cook waggled her finger angrily at Callum while she demanded to know where her biggest kettle had disappeared to. Callum had looked as though he was going to choke over the words aimed at him. His face turned beet red and the whiskers in his nose wriggled as he breathed out furiously. Removing without permission obviously wasn’t quite stealing but it was near enough for Callum to storm out of the kitchen after denying the accusation loudly enough to be heard in the next county.

Phillip peered into the kettle and gave it a small shake.

“Jennings will have to move with the times though I don’t think father will give up his hunters anytime soon. This will be for farm machinery, maybe even for transport. The new century is only a few months away; new inventions are coming. The horse as a working beast will soon be a thing of the past.” He tipped another bucket of water into the kettle and looked a little more satisfied. “That should do it.” He pushed a blackened rag around the hole in the top and then forced the lid into the gap. He grunted as he made sure it was tight before he tied some leather strips that looked very much like the missing set of traces that Jennings had spent the best part of the day looking for, around the lid and under the spout. He fastened the buckles, sat back on his heels and nodded in satisfaction. “Now it’s your turn, Alex. Light the fire will you. Keep adding the wood until I tell you.” Phillip passed a tinderbox from his pocket to his brother.

Alexander slid down from his position on a heap of tightly bound hay and looked at the salver hanging beneath the kettle. He glanced up at Phillip as he recognized the large silver platter on which their butler, Grady usually served their mother’s afternoon tea. Phillip ignored Alexander’s raised eyebrows and motioned his brother forwards.

Alexander struck the steel against the flint and sparks burst onto the thistledown. Puffing gently as he added shaving curls brought small flames licking to life and he added twig after twig until the fire was well established and needed larger chunks of wood. Phillip passed him several chopped logs that he had ‘borrowed’ from the woodpile and Alexander positioned them carefully for maximum impact. Then they both stood back and stared at the flames while they waited for something to happen.

Watching the kettle come to the boil was not the most interesting activity in which he been involved. Alexander sat back on the comfortable and sweet smelling hayrick and stared at the blue and gold flames while Phillip tinkered with something attached to the wheel.

“Is this going to take long do you think?” Alexander was not known for his patience. “I promised Jennings that I would help with the new filly father bought mother for a birthday gift. She’s a fabulous high stepper. Mother wants to take her out tomorrow but father says she has to wait until her special day. I don’t have to wait though and I wanted to have a ride first. Only to see if it is safe for mother you understand.” Alexander hid his grin at the prospect of riding the beautiful young horse.

Phillip looked down at his dark haired brother. He might be only twelve years old but the slightness of his body hid inner strength. Riding the new filly would be easy for Alexander. Phillip smiled as he shook his head and he then looked back at the kettle.

“Shouldn’t take too long to get up a head of steam. It’s getting the timing right that might be a problem. I need to keep as much steam in the kettle for as long as possible and then when I release the valve it should shoot out and give it a good chance of getting the piston moving. It’s lucky that I haven’t figured out how to attach the kettle to the two wheels actually. At the moment the cart will only turn in a circle but that will suit my purposes for now.” He looked around at the barn. There was less room than he had hoped due to the sudden and unexpected arrival of several unidentified crates stacked in the corner near the door but there was still plenty of room for the cart to turn. He adjusted the angle of the wheels accordingly.

Alexander kicked at the slender stems beneath his feet. He picked a stalk from the stook, sniffed at its sweet scent and twirled it in his fingers.

“I wish we had thought to bring some tuck. Cook was baking lardy cakes. They smelled as though they had just come out of the oven. I could have brought a few up here if I had known I was going to be all morning.” He sighed wistfully at his missed treat. He could almost imagine the smell of the delicious cakes as they left the oven, freshly baked and begging to be eaten. He sniffed the air and wondered at his own imagination. He would swear he could actually smell the things.

Phillip laughed as he consulted the drawing he had brought along with them. Satisfied that he had everything in perfect order he folded the drawing into his pocket.

“Half an hour is not all morning, Alex. A few hours without filling your stomach won’t kill you and at least if you are here with me you don’t have to put up with Lily Smith hanging onto your coat tails. She was loitering about waiting for lardy cakes too, you know.”

Alexander rolled his eyes dramatically as he thought of his narrow escape from the curly haired Lily earlier that morning.

He had been on the prowl for extras after eating what he considered a very meagre breakfast of coddled eggs, smoked haddock, bacon, kippers and butter smothered crumpets when he heard and deliberately avoided her. After being forced to marry the urchin only the previous week he had hidden behind the tapestry and covered his ears at Lily’s tuneless singing as she headed for the kitchen. It was her usual ditty and she sang it every day, loudly and at inordinate length.

He’d waited until she was well past before slipping from his hiding place and turning back the other way only marginally sorry that he wouldn’t be able to scrounge any titbits from the kitchen. It wasn’t that she was horrible or anything but a seven year old girl attempting to play with grown boys was not the done thing. She had a tendency to sing her favourite rhyme at the worst possible moment, when either Phillip was making his dying speech on the battlefield or when Alexander was in the middle of rescuing his brother from murderous cutthroat pirates.

Even worse, she occasionally tried to entice him into horrifying scenes of matrimonial bliss on their excursions into shark infested waters and Phillip, as Captain of the ship, wasn’t always as helpful as Alexander felt he should have been in extricating his brother and fellow crew members from such peril. Last week Phillip had actually married them before the mast. Alexander had been mortified but not nearly as mortified as Geoffrey, their steward’s son. Lily had draped the lad in a sheet and made him hold a bunch of freshly picked wild flowers while he acted as her attendant for the day. Alexander still blushed at the very thought that anyone might have seen them. Fortunately they had been well hidden in the deepest recesses of the garden.

It was at times like these when he thought it a shame that Smith, their ill-tempered tenant farmer, had been told that the child could come to the house while he worked in the fields, though if this favour hadn’t been bestowed after Lily’s mother’s horrific death, the child might have been sent to the orphanage. Even Phillip would have been appalled if that had happened to the girl. The trouble was that as she grew up she became used to the boys outlandish adventures and she now followed them everywhere, Alexander especially.

He knew that he should be firmer with her, after all being the farmer’s daughter it wasn’t her place to play with gentle folk but he hadn’t been able to harden his heart to the tears that fell from her huge, dark eyes in the same way that Phillip had managed. She made him feel guilty if he left her out and he avoided her as much as possible rather than tell her that a seven year old girl wasn’t wanted. Alexander paused in his thoughts as he realized that he and Phillip were quite happy for Geoffrey, their steward’s son, to join in their games as either foot soldier or cabin boy and he was only five or six, so maybe it was a girl thing after all. The raven haired horror’s eyes filled with water every time he even frowned at her and she always wheedled her way past his manly heart.

He plucked another stem from the hay beneath him and grunted as his stomach rumbled audibly.

“Well, it’s her fault that I am about to waste away as we sit here waiting for this blasted kettle to boil. I didn’t have much for breakfast and what with coming the long way around after father discovered our shortcut, I’m nearly famished. I would have had time to grab provisions if Lily hadn’t turned up so early today.”

Phillip nodded.

“I agree that she arrives at the most inconvenient times but father says we must put up with her. Smith is a sad and harsh man. His wife died in an accident only weeks before he took the farm at Ormond. He had come from a holding in Oxford.  The young Lord who owned the land was trying a new method of feeding cows on a rotating field system but he had not been careful enough. The cows were starving. Annie Smith had been walking across a different field when a herd of ravenous cows broke through a fence to find new grass. She was trampled and crushed in the stampede. Smith has taken it very hard. Father is worried that he will take out his anger on the girl. I think that father should run Smith off the land if he is that worried about Lily but mother won’t hear of it. She calls Lily her Little Treasure! Good grief!” He shook his head in wonder at his mother’s pet name. “She’s afraid that Smith would abandon the girl and then it would mean we would probably end up having her stay with us permanently. At least she’s only around during the daytime at the moment. Can you imagine if she were about all the time?” He snorted disgustedly.

Alexander held back a shudder as his head warred with his heart. Having Lily in the castle permanently would cause havoc to his normal boyhood activities. No more midnight or mid-morning excursions to cook’s delicious smelling larder. No more sneaking into his father’s study to try out the abominable brandy; though he wouldn’t actually miss that experience, Phillip had suggested that they try the port next and he was quite up for that. No more sliding down the polished wooden banisters. No more sneaking up to the loft to steal peeks at the martin’s eggs. As it was they had been forbidden to use the tunnel leading from their father’s bedroom to the beach.

In feudal times it had been built into the castle as an escape route for an endangered Lord but now it was a fun way to arrive at the beach undetected. That was until their father had spotted Lily disappearing into his wardrobe. Alexander had been rather shocked to find himself on the end of a sharp telling off for leading the girl into a dangerous passageway, one that according to his father, due to its age and disrepair, could collapse at any moment. Both boys had been forbidden to use the secret passage ever again. Life would become intolerable if she interfered anymore and he didn’t think he could bear the thought of playing with the girl more than necessary already.