Chapter Nineteen
Jack tar.
“Another Fair Maid, please.”
The girl winked and drifted off to the cider barrel.
Jack felt…odd.
Normally, he’d be ensconced at the bar of such a hostelry, regaling the locals and flirting with the comely barmaid but here he sat in the unlit corner, feeling a tad…odd.
Perchance Mrs Pencally’s snuffles were proliferating.
The Treloor Inn’s whitewashed exterior and thick stone walls repelled the sultry heat of this September evening. Homely and snug, the scent of apples, hops and clay pipe smoke twirled in the air and this Fair Maid cider was fulsome indeed.
Captain Lynch had been sitting at the bar when he’d entered, hobnobbing with the girl, and they’d nodded tightly at each other, but he’d left soon after and Jack had heaved a sigh of relief at not having to engage in mannerly prittle-prattle.
The inn seemed busy, so he surmised the lack of wind was driving fishermen to the grog, and chomping on dried fishy morsels, he surveyed the other patrons from his secluded corner.
Leathery tanned faces haunted the bar, eyes morose like mermaids forced onto land, muttering about causes for the becalmed weather – piskies, black cats and even outlanders from up-country had been blamed…
Having left Tamsyn in the safekeeping of her father, Jack had discovered a crisply folded note from Miggens on his bedchamber desk, requesting his presence in this establishment on the chime of ten; he’d arrived an hour previous, wishing to calm the rage that simmered in his gut after hearing Tamsyn’s terrifying recollections.
Earlier in the day, he’d visited the Helston magistrates to question their churchyard attacker, but despite languishing behind bars, the squalid creature had declined to bleat.
Instead, his eyes had rolled white, staring to the cell window with terror, hands clawing at the threadbare blanket.
Jack had concluded that the malodorous villain was merely a puppet, but who’d pulled the strings? A mastermind of kidnap, perchance? The sort to terrify a young girl and scar her with a knife?
Coincidence, Asher Rainham had forever pronounced, did not exist. Look at the connections, he would say, and assess the probabilities.
A botched murder attempt on himself, the churchyard attack, Tamsyn Penrose – and all to the backdrop of Napoleon’s defeat.
La Chauve-Souris. Alive?
A high probability.
And if so, what did he want? Tamsyn?
Did he truly intend to reclaim her like some spoil of war?
The French fiend was an insane obsessive who had seen the courage and strength within a young girl – seen it and wanted it, biding his time until France ruled England. But with Napoleon conquered, the rat with wings could do no more than run.
Jack’s thoughts slid to Tamsyn herself: so very determined yet scared, spirited yet vulnerable, tugging her bodice low to bare her soul.
A billow of lust surged, his vexed noggin relaying vivid images: naked skin, tousled hair, panting breath. If he had succumbed to her plea, if he had ignored rule two, at this very moment he might have been deep–
“There you are, my lord, hidden in the corner. I almost missed you.”
Jack peered up, eyes glazed. “I felt like being alone.”
“Really?” Miggens’s palm reached to Jack’s forehead. “Are you feeling amiss? You do appear somewhat flushed.”
“I feel…odd.”
“Must be Mrs Pencally’s snuffles.”
Jack nodded, satisfied. That’s what he’d concluded.
After unbuttoning his jacket, Miggens doubled it meticulously, laid it upon one end of the bench, and then tucked a book beneath its folds. He sat, boots tidily crossed.
“What are you reading?”
“Nothing. It would bore you, my lord. You’ve an abhorrence for reading.”
Jack frowned – made him sound plebeian and he plucked the thick tome out before Miggens could make a grab.
Noting the spine, he could see why.
Soil Cultivation and Crop Rotation in the West Country.
“Hah!” Jack crowed, still feeling odd but a mite cheered. “You’re going to accept the estate.”
A sulky Miggens sulked some more, arms crossed. “I encountered it in the library, ’tis all, and I like to read prodigiously, you know that.”
“Faugh, so say you, brother of mine, but don’t think I haven’t noticed your new Egyptian-brown waistcoat either. You look as smart as a newly scraped carrot lately.”
Another cider materialised, and Jack reached for it in haste, gulping the crisp cloudy liquid.
“You must indeed be feeling at sixes and sevens,” said Miggens, gawping across the rim of his lemonade. “No ribald flirtation with the barmaid. Perhaps you ought to visit Mrs Tripconey. I found eight of her calling cards amongst your garments. Four in the emerald tailcoat, two in the puce silk waistcoat, one in the hatband of your black beaver and another in the silver-engraved snuff case. I expected to find one in your fawn bree–”
“She tried.”
“And you didn’t let her?” Miggens’s brow creased. “You’re certainly ailing as she’s just your kind: attractive, mercenary, unencumbered and willing. You could visit her later, my lord.”
Jack tugged his cravat loose, nausea looming.
Perhaps this illness was graver than first thought. Influenza or some peculiar Cornish affliction – after all, he’d partaken of more than a few suspicious sea delicacies. “No, not with these…snuffles.”
“You engaged in fornication with a certain Lady Randolph last spring a mere three hours after sustaining a bullet wound to your arm.”
“Purely as pain relief.” He sipped his Fair Maiden. “How do you remember these things, Miggs? Is it you that sells those stories to the gossip sheets?”
“Hmm. Good idea,” said Miggens, sipping his own drink and smacking his lips – surely for show as who could enjoy lemonade? “I could then retire to the country and marr–” A glare. “I know what you are doing, my lord. I’ve seen it before. You witter on with nonsensical nonsense, until your dupe confesses all. Well, not I.”
Jack nibbled a fishy crumb and smirked. Miggens was an open book, and assuredly, his desire for Miss Treherne was written all down his starched sleeve, but they’d best get on with Crown matters.
“What information do you have?” Jack asked. “Please tell me you lolled in some tavern with a doxy in your lap. It would cheer me immensely.”
Not that he was down in the dumps. Just…odd.
“Faugh!” Miggens bellowed, and Jack smiled: that was his line but his brother delivered it equally well. “Did you know…” Oliver leaned close. “…the professor was given his marching orders from Oxford University? Booted out for accepting bribes.”
Jack raised a brow. “You have been busy. How in hades did you find that out?”
“No doxies involved.” A smug expression accompanied folded arms. “The landlord at the Six Bells in Helston isn’t averse to gossip and the professor rambles aplenty when inebriated.”
“Well done, Oliver. Anything else? Any gossip about the incident six years ago?”
“Questions in hostelries regarding coastal goings-on are met with suspicion and your drink being hastily removed.” He clutched his lemonade close. “They know about it, for certain, but I sensed anger and guilt. After all, the enemy was able to hide in their midst, and the lad Jonathan was well-liked. His widowed father went to sea soon after and never returned.”
Scrubbing a hand over his eyes, Jack pressed back against the cool stone wall. “Well, I should tell you tonight that the mission is complete, but we aren’t going anywhere, not with Tamsyn in potential danger.”
Miggens nodded, seemingly not displeased with an extended stay in Cornwall.
“But for now,” continued Jack, clanking his empty glass against his brother’s, “sluice your drought and I’ll treat you to a Fair Maiden or two instead. Let’s loosen ourselves a smidgeon, and with luck cure my damnable…oddness.”
“Soooo,” Oliver slurred whilst his motley catch of fishermen leaned close, chairs tipping on the flagstone floor in their eagerness. “Numerous witnesses proclaim the comely princess stepped from the balloon basket with rumpled gown and flaxen hair all-a-tangle, the rogue himself offering an arm, cravat skew-whiff and shirt untucked.”
“Huzzah,” they all cheered, tankards thumping in approval as Oliver decided to enact the rogue’s disreputable appearance, cravat flung to the beams and waistcoat ripped open with a flourish.
Oh, how the fusty guts valet had fallen…
“My hero!” shouted Benjamin, guzzling cider as though blight was streaking through the Cornish apple orchards.
“Let’s have another tot…” hollered the professor, who’d staggered through the door not quarter of an hour past. “…to celebrate Winterbourne’s conquest.”
“Confound it,” muttered Jack from the corner. “I’ve never set foot in a hot air balloon.” But none of them gave one whit for their “hero’s” point of view, the fiction more fascinating than the man.
“Any more tales, Mr Miggens?” Benjamin stood. “I’ll fetch you a Polly Whitehair. ’Tes sweeter.” He swayed and sank down again with a groan. “Whoa, I feel a dab tadly-oodly.”
Jack felt odd too.
Some nights, it made no difference how much one drank – it scarcely had any effect, as though it leaked straight from your toes.
Oliver embarked upon the yarn of the Parisian soprano complete with accent, and Jack shrank further into the murky corner, there being an element of truth to this one.
A fellow from the next table leaned over, blue eyes that didn’t belong on land awash with amusement. “Enjoy it whilst you can, lad. I used to be as wild as the heather on the heath, but once I got hitched to my lass, she made sure I never strayed further than the bog house.”
“How? Dire threats? Retribution? Pasties?”
“Gawd, no. She loved me something fierce instead. Nary another woman like her. And when you meet someone like that, ’tes done for, you are.”
Jack shook the fellow’s bronzed hand – he’d a grip like a lobster – and was about to enquire more when a chorus of whistles interrupted them. Oliver now held the Treloor folk in raptures with a hand-whirling description of the soprano’s curvy outlines – in truth, most had been padding but a gentleman was ever discreet.
“I believe I’ll always be the rogue,” Jack admitted, turning back.
A wink from the salty azure eye. “And you caen’t believe a liar when he’s telling the truth.”
Jack made no attempt to untangle that Cornish mangle.
“More,” the audience cried, and they both twisted to view Oliver now clambering onto a stool in order to deliver the prologue for the Tuscan Contessa debacle.
Please no.
Remind him never to let his brother near cider again: he’d loosened like an oiled screw and would be rolling around the flagstones soon, lost to the cracks.
Dragging himself up, Jack pushed through the crowd. “Oliver, home.”
Hisses and boos boomed in the small bar.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen.” Jack bowed to all and sundry. “The hour is nigh, and we must all abroad like Mary Miles, for when ’tes over, ’tes over, as Joan said by her wedding.” He hoisted an arm. “For two by two like Bassett’s three sheep, we go forth, knowing ’tes a good thing that wild cows got short horns.”
Whoops and cheers boomed in the small bar.
Jack grinned. Maybe he was finding his sea legs in Cornwall.
“Watch out for th–”
“Ouch.”
“Branch,” completed Jack as his brother rubbed his forehead and righted himself in the saddle.
Deciding they were both far too cup-shot for more than a vague amble, the ride back to the manor was a leisurely affair except for maintaining Oliver aloft. Jack allowed the horses to map their own way along the bridle paths which criss-crossed harvested fields and hay meadows.
Admittedly, they could have been heading for Timbuktu but the air felt pleasantly cool, the moon shone bright and only the occasional owl rent the silence, so who really minded?
“You’re the best brother I’ve got,” mumbled Oliver, flinging his arms out and losing the reins.
“That isn’t saying much, Oli. Two of our half-siblings are in prison, one lives in Scotland, one made a new start in America and the other two are girls.”
“Still, you’re the best of the bunch.”
Handing Oli his lost reins, they arrived at a stone wall. Damn it, everything appeared different in the dark – but Jowlik snickered his head to the right and he’d lived here longer.
“Shall I sing to lovely Lowdy outside her door upon our return? One of the fishermen taught me some most excellent verses.”
“What seems a splendid idea by night, Oli, is generally a bad one by day. And if you mean that sea shanty of the dollymop and the merman, I’d say it’s best forgotten.”
He gave a mournful nod.
As the fields gave way to open land, Penrose Manor came into view, its turrets no longer Gothic but romantic, its stone walls no longer forbidding but convivial, and as for its blue-eyed maiden… Jack shook his head and then wished he hadn’t.
Oliver squinted blearily. “Are you still feeling odd?”
Indeed. He now thought it might be pneumonia.