Chapter Thirty-One
After her late night, Charlotte couldn’t stir herself to do anything useful. In truth, everything seemed utterly pointless. Rafe had dealt her a blow like the Dolorous Blow of Arthurian legend—slashing open a wound she feared would never heal.
She sighed for what felt like the thousandth time and gazed at the ivy rustling against the window frame. A pair of flycatchers had made their nest in it in the spring, and she missed watching them raise their young, and the way the tiny speckled birds twisted, turned, and swooped on the wing after flies.
Now the birds were gone. The joys of summer were over, and so was her affair with Rafe.
“Charlotte? You’re wool-gathering again.”
“Forgive me, Mama. I slept poorly.”
“So did I,” said Aunt Flora. “I thought to try Dr. Campaign’s nostrum for sleeplessness tonight. Perhaps you should, too.”
“Gladly,” Charlotte said. “Assuming it doesn’t taste foul.” A night of blissful oblivion was just what she needed.
“I don’t have any here, but I can obtain some with great dispatch. I’m a…a rather special customer, and I receive express service.”
Mama said accusingly, “Do you mean to say you’ve entered into correspondence with this quack doctor?”
“I don’t care to hear you call him that. He’s a physician and a pharmacist of many years standing, and numbers amongst his clients many of the nobility.”
Bravo, Flora! Her aunt didn’t stand up to Mama nearly often enough.
“He has gulled you, Flora, make no mistake,” was Mama’s reply. “You only imagine that his remedies work because you are so impressionable.”
“Nonsense! Didn’t you see how quickly Lord Beckport—I mean, Mr. Seabourne—recovered from his injuries? No infection, no gangrene, no fever. It is a testament to Ephraim’s—that is, Dr. Campaign’s—skill.”
Mama stared open-mouthed at Aunt Flora. “Ephraim?”
“Gracious, is that the time?” Flora said with a gasp, glancing at the mantel clock. “I’d quite forgotten—there’s something I really have to do.” She almost ran from the room.
Mama stared at the closed door for a full minute without speaking. Then she said, “Well! What do you make of that?”
There was only one explanation Charlotte could think of. “Perhaps Aunt Flora has developed a tendre for this…itinerant physician.”
“Good lord. Well, it might explain why she bought so many of his nostrums.”
“Mama!”
“I really don’t know what to think,” said Mama, spreading her hands in a gesture of hopelessness. “I was relying on her to drum some sense of propriety into you. But all this time, she’s been corresponding with a man of questionable repute beneath our very noses!”
If only Mama knew what else had been going on beneath her very nose… But no, Charlotte would not think about Rafe. The memory of his coldness last night was like a sliver of ice piercing her heart. “I’m not sure ordering medicines counts as corresponding,” she ventured.
“But she used his first name. Didn’t you hear? I don’t call any gentleman by his first name. Of that, I’m certain.”
“If there is something between the two of them,” Charlotte said, “would it be so very dreadful? She’s a handsome woman, and not exactly in her dotage.”
“My little sister? Run off with a gypsy doctor? Travel around the countryside in a cart?”
“He’s hardly a gypsy.”
But the idea of Aunt Flora running off with anyone was a stark reminder of Charlotte’s own folly. She thought of Justin and how unfortunate it was that he still cared for her so deeply. Now that Rafe had cast her off, could she not return her wounded heart to Justin’s safe keeping? She’d loved him once. Surely, there was no reason she couldn’t love him again? His life and his reputation had been saved, and he was now in gainful—if somewhat risky—employment.
They could still elope… Mama would never expect the same thing to happen twice.
But heavens, no. Had she not learned her lesson the first time? To do such a thing a second time would be both selfish and childish. If she wanted to be treated as a woman, she needed to behave like one.
She and Justin would just have to wait until he obtained his majority, until his papa and her mama were so used to seeing them as a couple, they’d no longer have any objection to the match.
She stared out at the ivy again, picturing herself and Justin being showered with rose petals on the church porch, cheered on by Aunt Flora, frowned on—a little—by Mama and surrounded by the village children, all washed and brushed for the occasion.
This picture of domestic bliss came crashing down when her treacherous imagination replaced Justin with Rafe, commanding and proud, his dark eyes flashing with promise as he leaned down to kiss his bride.
Her stomach clenched as she remembered the feel of those sure, firm lips against hers. Her hands gripped the plastered stonework of the windowsill, and she sucked in a deep breath.
“I know, I know,” her mama said, bringing her sharply back to reality. “The idea is insupportable. I’m much inclined to give this false physician a piece of my mind.”
Charlotte slowly let out a breath. “We don’t know where he is. If Aunt Flora is writing to him, he’s hardly likely to be in Fortuneswell.”
“Assuming she’s telling us the truth,” Mama said darkly. “I think we should take a walk over to the Admiral Duncan and see if he’s there. Then we can walk over to the milliner’s in Byroad and get some trimmings for our bonnets. I hear that peddler, Baldwin, was in Byroad the other day, and I know Mrs. Matthews buys good silk ribbons from him to sell in the shop.”
A walk in the autumn sunshine sounded a splendid way to Charlotte to dispel her melancholy…if only for a while. And if Mama was going to take issue with Dr. Campaign, it was a scene she certainly didn’t want to miss.
Fifteen minutes later, they reached the inn yard of the Admiral Duncan, but neither the doctor’s wagon nor Aunt Flora was anywhere to be seen. Charlotte breathed a sigh of relief. The good doctor was safe from Mama’s sharp tongue, at least for now.
A child’s voice said, “Morning Missus Allston, morning Miss Allston.” It was young Jacky Scadden, busy playing in the dirt with a crudely carved whip and top.
“Good morning, Jacky,” she said.
Mama nodded briefly and walked away to read a notice pasted to the wall of the inn.
“Why aren’t you at Mrs. Carboys’, doing your lessons?” Charlotte asked him.
The boy looked sheepish and twirled the leather thong of the whip around his fingers. “I had a sore throat this morning and Ma thought it might be the croup, so she said not to go so’s not to give it to the other children.”
Charlotte raised an eyebrow. “The croup, eh?”
He twisted the thong more tightly. “I’m feeling lots better now. Must have been a fishbone or something. But I can’t go to school this late. Mrs. Carboys won’t want to be disturbed in the middle of a lesson.”
At Charlotte’s snort of disbelief, he looked away, and his hand slid into his pocket, where it fidgeted nervously with something.
Curious, she asked, “What have you got in your pocket, Jacky?”
“Nothing!” he said quickly. “Nothing important or valuable. Or secret. I’ve done nothin’ wrong, Miss Allston, honest I haven’t.”
She knelt down, her interest piqued by the child’s blatant lies, and held out her palm. After a long hesitation, Jacky reluctantly dropped something small and shiny into it.
A coin.
As she examined it, the hairs on the back of her neck tingled. “Where did you get this half-sovereign?”
He shuffled his feet. “Can’t say.”
She captured his gaze. “Can’t say, or won’t?”
“He told me not to,” Jacky said anxiously. “On pain of death.”
She searched his nervous face. “Does your mama know about this?”
He shook his head vigorously. “The gentleman said it was secret, and I must save it for when I get married. But I don’t want to get married. I hate girls.”
Charlotte’s next question was stern but quiet. “What gentleman?”
“Telling’s more than my life’s worth.”
Why would a stranger give a small child a half-sovereign and order him to secrecy? Her pulse raced because she knew exactly why.
And her heart quailed at the thought of little Jacky being blown to bits when he went to earn his coin.
“Jacky, I have to ask you some very important questions. If I’m right, nod your head. If I’m wrong, shake it. That way, you won’t have to say anything out loud, and it won’t be telling. So you haven’t broken your word to the gentleman. Understand?”
Looking about warily, he nodded.
“The man who gave you this money, have you ever seen him before?”
Shake.
Not Culverdale then, but one of his cronies.
“Did the man talk with a strange accent?”
Vigorous nodding.
A French spy, then.
“Were you to start a big fire in return for the coin?”
Another nod.
Her heart thundered. “Did he show you where?”
Jacky nodded again, looking relieved, as if glad to unburden himself of his secret.
“Good boy. Now, you’re going to take a walk with me and Mama, and show me the place where the wood for the bonfire’s been stacked. Or as close as we can get without leaving the path.” She thought for a moment. “Let’s not tell Mama. It’ll be our secret. When we’re there, I want you to stop and pretend you’ve got a stone in your shoe. Understand?”
He nodded again. “Yes, Miss.”
After some persuasion, he let her take charge of the half-sovereign, and agreed that he would, under no circumstances, light the bonfire as he’d been told to. She promised no harm would come to him for disobeying the stranger—and prayed she would find a way to keep her promise.
Once again, the answer lay solidly with Rafe.
If Jacky gave him a description of the stranger, as well as the location of another confirmed beacon, he’d be that much closer to unraveling the traitor’s ghastly plot. When that happened, Jacky and all the other children seduced by the glint of the traitor’s gold would be safe.
The only downside was that she’d have to see Rafe again. And after the events of last night, she didn’t know if he’d let her come anywhere near him.