AN EXCURSION AND A PLAN
“Another load, sir, and we're done.”
“Quite so,” Richard nodded to Stower, where he stood by the cart. Instead of requisitioning food and equipment – an activity Richard thought of as little better than plunder – he had managed to obtain some little funds from the quartermaster. They were buying wheat.
“My back will be glad when that's done,” Stower grumbled, rubbing the offending muscles with a flat palm. “Blasted things are blasted heavy, if you don't mind me saying so.”
Richard chuckled. “Well, they are meant to be,” he said, thinking about how much wheat it took to feed a regiment. The lot they'd bought today might last three days.
“Aye, sir,” Stower nodded. “Try tellin' me back that. It'll disagree with you.”
Richard grinned. In spite of the chilly rain and the darkness of the afternoon, Stower managed to make him laugh. “Well, if there's a difference of opinion between yourself and your back, I'm inclined not to argue too much. If the two halves of you had a disagreement, you might end up split in two, which'd be a sorry sight to see.”
“Aye!” Stower chuckled.
They both turned to where two men carried out the last of the bags.
“You lot done?” Stower inquired mildly.
“Aye, we are,” one of the men said dourly. “We off, sir?” he asked Richard hopefully.
“If that's the last of the wheat, then yes,” Richard nodded, making a mental calculation as he assessed the number of bags in the back of the cart against how many stones of wheat he'd bought from the grain farmer. It seemed about accurate. If the man had kept back a bag, they'd only know for sure when they'd unloaded it. And he'll not like what I do to him if I have to come back and discuss having been cheated.
Richard sighed and, squeezing his horse with his knees, rode to the front of the cart. He didn't like the thought of violence, but there was a strange restlessness loose in his soul today. A restlessness he did not know how to slake.
“Right, fellows,” he said. “We're off. Back at the camp by four of the clock, we should be.”
“Aye, sir,” one of the men who'd been carrying grain a moment ago murmured. “Be glad to be out of the rain.”
“So will I,” Richard mused. He gripped his horse with his knees and they rode into the darkening afternoon.
As they rode through rain-drenched trees, Richard found his mind returning to his worry and tension from earlier. Where was Arabella? Was she safe?
I have to know, he decided to himself. It wasn't possible for him to ignore this worry any longer. She might have been the quarry of the Major and his troops out searching for spies. In which case, was she safe? Failing that, there were still vagabonds and outlaws in the woodlands, and she was one person, alone. He bit his lip.
Anything could have happened to her, and I sent her back alone. Whatever happens, I am responsible. I must have been mad. What else, he reflected grimly, could he have done? With Major Rowell with them, and the pretense of her being a war-widow, how could he have convinced the man he needed to escort her home?
I am a fool. I should never have even thought of leaving her in the encampment. I should have ignored Rowell and escorted her myself.
“Sir?” Stower asked, breaking in on his thoughts.
“Yes?” Richard asked, grimly resigned to the interruption.
“We supposed to go straight back down the valley? Or should we curve through the town somewhere? Me and the fellows is in sore need of victualing.”
“A moment,” Richard said, raising a hand as he paused, looking about. That was not too much of a bad idea. Rain dripped down his hat, sluicing his face. He blinked his eyes as it stung them and tried to think.
Duncliffe is not far from here. If we take the next road to the right, then travel through the village of Brookfield, we could inquire after her, mayhap.
“Yes,” he nodded quickly. “We will take the first road right. You two, you'll stay with the cart. We'll leave it out of the rain,” he added as the two men he'd appointed as cart guards cast a sullen look toward him.
“Aye, sir.”
They headed right, down the winding road into Brookfield.
The place had a small gate, guarded by two very suspicious-looking sentries. As they slit their eyes at Richard where he rode before the cart, he felt a shiver of apprehension. These little outlying places – Brookfield, Grayling, Duncliffe – they had a high likelihood of being hostile. Here he was with three men to defend vital grain supplies. He shivered. This was stupid.
“Name and business?” one of the men challenged, casting a surly glance in his direction.
“Richard Osborne, lieutenant, Scots Borderers.” Why lie? “Requesting passage for a consignment of grain for His Majesty's regiment.”
The two men looked at each other. One of them shrugged.
“Right then, in you go,” he said. “Sir,” he added belatedly as Richard stiffened.
He nodded and the cart moved at a slow, grinding pace through the gates.
In the village, the first thing Richard did was find an inn.
“You go round the stables with the men, Stower,” he commanded quickly. “I'll go inside and get hot food for us.”
“Bless you, sir.”
They both laughed.
In the dining-room, while Richard waited for the innkeeper's wife to get together a cauldron of stew for them, he stood by the fire and listened to the talk. Most of the locals spoke Lowland Scots, and his was good enough to listen to their talking.
“So,” one of them was saying at a table beside Richard. “You heard about the goings on?”
“The feast?”
“Aye.”
“Can't go,” the one man said, sounding disappointed. “Got to shoe horses in Presterley.”
“Och, too bad,” the first man said. “She's a bonny lass. I'd be glad to drink a toast at the hand-fasting”
The second man said something crude and Richard blinked. He frowned. Who were they discussing?
“Excuse me,” he said to the innkeeper's wife as she came past, a tray of plates held firmly in her strong grasp. “But I heard word of a feasting nearby?”
“On Monday,” she said curtly. “Laird's daughter having a hand-fasting, or so I heard. Rather hasty business, so they say.”
“Oh?” Richard could have been shot in the knee just then and not have noticed. He was in complete shock. He heard how distant his own voice sounded, as he asked: “The local laird?”
“Aye! Over at Duncliffe.”
The whole room whirled out of focus.
Arabella was getting married? He stared and wished his sight would clear. He knew it was ridiculous of him to feel this way, but it felt like a blow straight to his guts. She was seemingly no one to him, a woman he had met twice – once in the woods and once at a ball. She had however, in those two meetings, touched his heart as none other ever had.
He was, he realized with some surprise, more attached to her than he'd ever thought to be. Now she was marrying someone else?
“Come on, Richard,” he hissed to himself as he went back to the hallway, feeling too restless for the crowded, noisy dining room of the inn anymore. “It isn't your business.”
All the same, the more he tried to forget about it, the worse it seemed. A thought occurred to him: Was this Arabella's choosing? Or had her father imposed this on her?
He shook his head. Whatever the case, she was lost to him.
“And what can I do?” he asked himself.
A thought occurred to him. He could try and ride to Duncliffe. Try to see her, speak to her.
It was a ridiculous, wild plan. He had fled the place on pain of being shot not a few nights before this one. Now he wished to go back. Unaccompanied?
“I have to try.”
Just then, the innkeeper's wife appeared.
“The stew will be done in a moment, sir,” she said. “Before then, if you'd care to take this bread out to your lads? They look ready to eat the props for the stable roof, so they do.”
Richard laughed. “Indeed, madam,” he said lightly. “I'll take that out before they do harm to your stables.”
She dimpled and handed him the basket of freshly baked loaves. Richard smiled as he breathed in the delicious aroma and questioned why he'd expected hostility.
Most of the countryside folk probably couldn't care less who sits the throne of England, he thought mildly. If there's food in their bellies and peace in their homesteads, most people couldn't be bothered about matters of state.
Which was, he thought wryly, a sensible state of affairs.
“If I wasn't in the army, I couldn't care less, either,” he said aloud.
“Sir?” Stower asked as he reached the men, huddled under the eaves of the stable.
“I said, if we weren't in the army, we wouldn't eat like this,” he amended. Stower laughed.
“Well, sir! This is the best meal I've had since joining the army, I can say that for 't.” he grinned, reaching for a steaming loaf.
As the men attacked the contents of the basket with gusto, Richard helped himself to a bannock and crumbled a piece off absently, his mind far away.
He had to see Arabella again, and soon.
The stew arrived soon after the bread and the four of them retired to the barn, settling themselves on hay bales to eat their meal. As they ate, the men making short work of it, Richard made a plan.
“So,” he said, trying to keep his voice as level as possible, “how would you feel about a trip past Duncliffe?”
Stower stared at him. He had a small loaf in one hand, gravy running down his face. He swallowed. “Sir? You're in earnest?”
Richard sighed. “No, Stower, I'm making some elaborate farce. Of course I'm in earnest. What do you say?”
“You mean, go to Duncliffe to, well, assess it?”
Richard sighed again. “In a manner of speaking, yes. To find out strength, size, numbers. And, more importantly, the mood in the fortress. I'll have to go in alone,” he demurred. “But I wouldn't refuse someone waiting for me to come out.”
His man nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Richard let out a long sigh. “Good. You're a good sort, Stower.”
Stower was eating again, mouth full of fish stew. He nodded to Richard firmly, eyes sparkling. Richard felt some tension in him go out, replaced with a strange excitement for his plans. He knew it was wild, but he had to see her. To ask her if this was her choice. If it was, he thought grimly, he would make himself accept it. However, if it was not, well...if it was not, then they would have to do something. He was not about to see a woman as beautiful, wise and lovely as her suffering for one man's foolishness. Nor would he suffer for it himself.