Midnight Quill Trio

Chapter 2-3

Edward looked at the list once it was complete. Nine names. One of whom had to be Chérie. Probably not the curate, he thought. But he didn’t cross the man’s name out.

He asked for another sheet of paper and sat down in a corner of the taproom to compose a brief letter to Gareth. I need a favor, he wrote. Can you send me as many of Chérie’s confessions as you can lay hands on? He thought for a moment, and added a postscript. And I’d appreciate it if you’d have your man pack up a week’s worth of my clothes and send them to Creed Hall. I shall be here longer than I anticipated.

The door from the yard swung open and someone entered the taproom. Edward looked up. It was Miss Chapple. Her gown was muddy almost to the knee.

The innkeeper abandoned his tankard and his conversation with the blacksmith again.

Edward read what he’d written. He crossed out week, and wrote a few days instead. There were only nine names on his list. If he was lucky, Chérie would be the first person he approached; if he was unlucky, she’d be the ninth. Either way, it would scarcely take a week.

Miss Chapple’s voice was a low, contralto murmur in the background. Edward folded the letter, pushed back his chair, and walked across to where she stood. “Miss Chapple.”

She started and spun around, her eyes wide. “Mr. Kane! What . . . what are you doing here?”

“I brought back the mail.”

“Oh.” She swallowed. “My uncle’s footman could have done that. He comes in each day.”

Edward shrugged. “I wanted to see Soddy Morton.” He pushed the folded letter across the taproom counter. “You have a wafer?”

The innkeeper did. Edward watched his letter sealed, and then turned to Miss Chapple. “What brings you here?”

“Like you, a letter. I write to a friend in London every week.” She nodded to the innkeeper. “Thank you, Mr. Potts.”

After Miss Chapple had departed, Edward entered into negotiations for the hire of a mount from the innkeeper’s stable. Only one horse was up to his weight.

“His name’s Trojan,” the ostler informed him as he tightened the girths. “Acos he’s so big. But he’s as gentle as a babe.”

“Trojan.” Edward smoothed his hand down the gray gelding’s neck. “What’s his pace like?”

“He don’t like to go fast.”

Edward glanced at the sky. The hills in the distance had disappeared behind a haze of rain. “He’ll have to, unless he wants to get wet.” He swung up into the saddle and tossed a coin to the ostler.

Trojan was an amiable beast, but the ostler had been correct: he didn’t like to go fast. With effort, Edward urged the gelding into a slow trot. Miss Chapple was halfway back to the Hall before they caught up with her.

“Oh, no!” she said, when he reined in and dismounted. “Pray don’t walk, Mr. Kane. It’s so muddy!”

“I’m used to mud, Miss Chapple.” Edward matched his stride to hers. “I apologize for not informing you that I intended to visit the village. I could have spared you the exertion.”

“You would have deprived me of a pleasure,” she said. “I like to walk.”

“You do?” Edward said, avoiding a puddle.

“The exercise is refreshing.” Miss Chapple cast him a sideways glance beneath her dowdy bonnet, in the manner of one imparting a secret. A dimple flickered in her cheek. “And . . . I confess that I like to leave the Hall.”

The mud sucked at his boots, reminding him of Waterloo. The reek of the battlefield filled his nose between one step and the next: cannon smoke, blood, death. Edward shoved the memory aside. “Do you never ride?” And then he remembered the emptiness of Strickland’s stables. “Your uncle keeps no riding horses?”

“He thinks it an unnecessary luxury.”

Edward suppressed a grunt. Such parsimony seemed entirely in keeping with what he’d seen of Arthur Strickland.

“If you’d like to ride, I can offer you Trojan as a mount. I have it on good authority that he’s as gentle as a baby, for all his size.”

Miss Chapple glanced past him at the big gray gelding. Her expression became wistful. “I should love to.”

“Then please do,” Edward said. “I’ll be at Creed Hall for a few more days. I’ll tell the groom you may ride Trojan as often as you wish.”

Miss Chapple shook her head. “Thank you, Mr. Kane. Your offer is most generous. But I have no riding habit—and even if I did, my uncle doesn’t keep a sidesaddle.”

“Ah,” Edward said. He walked in silence for several seconds, then asked: “How long have you lived at Creed Hall?”

“Ten years,” Miss Chapple said. “My uncle was kind enough to take me in when my parents died.”

They turned up a farm lane, passed a barn, and set off across an open field. The mud became deeper, sucking greedily at their boots.

Creed Hall was dimly visible on the crest of the hill, a dark, angular shape, surrounded by winter-bare trees. A bleak place to call home. “You must be lonely here,” Edward said involuntarily.

She glanced at him. “Not now that Mrs. Dunn lives with us.”

Which meant that she had been lonely before that. Edward felt a stirring of pity for her. “Has Lady Marchbank lived with you long?”

“Three years,” Miss Chapple said, holding her skirts up above her ankles as she strode through the mud. “Since she was widowed.”

They came to a gate and a stile. “My uncle plans to turn Creed Hall into a school for missionaries’ children,” Miss Chapple said, climbing the stile.

“He does?” Edward led Trojan through the gate and latched it again.

Miss Chapple nodded. “He wishes to provide missionaries’ children with a free and rigorous education.”

Edward followed her gaze, trying to imagine Creed Hall full of children. It looked like a prison atop the hill, grim and dark, jutting from the leafless trees that encircled it. Poor creatures.

Miss Chapple tipped her face up to the sky. “It’s starting to rain.”

“Would you like to shelter?” He looked back at the barn. “I can ride ahead and fetch . . .” What? No carriage could plow its way through these boggy fields. “An umbrella?”

Laughter sprang into her face, bringing a glimpse of dimples. “Thank you for the offer, Mr. Kane, but a little rain won’t hurt me. I shan’t melt away.”

They set off across the next field. It was novel to walk with so tall a female. He didn’t have to bend his head to speak to her or shorten his stride to match hers. “Do you have any brothers or sisters, Miss Chapple?”

She shook her head. “I counted Toby as my brother.”

As did I.

Edward cleared his throat. “He always said you were his favorite cousin.”

Miss Chapple glanced at him from beneath the brim of her bonnet. “You think that high praise? I was Toby’s only cousin, Mr. Kane. That was his way of a joke.”

“Oh.” Edward blinked, and then frowned. He trudged through the mud, thinking back to the times he’d heard Toby mention Miss Chapple. “A joke, perhaps, but I believe the sentiment was truly meant. He always said . . . you made him laugh.”

Her lips twisted into a sad smile. “He made me laugh, too. High Toby.” Her expression altered, her eyes narrowing. “Was it you who held up that coach with him, or was it Sir Gareth?”

Edward missed a step. “Uh . . . what?”

“A coach,” Miss Chapple said. “He held one up on a lark. Oh, years ago! When he was up at Oxford.”

“He told you about that?”

Miss Chapple nodded. “He said it was my fault, because it was I who first called him High Toby.” She snorted, an expressive puff of sound that reminded him of Toby. “So was it you, Mr. Kane, who went with him, or Sir Gareth?”

Edward opened his mouth to lie, encountered surprisingly astute gray eyes, and spoke the truth: “It was me.”

Miss Chapple shook her head and tutted. “I am shocked, Mr. Kane. Truly shocked!” Her cheeks dimpled.

Edward felt himself flush. “We were young and very foolish.”

Miss Chapple’s dimples became more pronounced. “Toby said the occupant was a fat little clerk who threw a ledger at him.”

“Hit him on the head.” He had a flash of memory: moonlight, the clerk’s shrill vituperation, the pages of the ledger fluttering whitely. “Knocked him off his horse.”

Miss Chapple laughed. “He didn’t tell me that!”

Edward grinned and shrugged. “I’m not surprised. It was an ignominious moment.”

They walked a few paces in silence, apart from the squelch of mud and patter of raindrops. Edward’s grin faded. He glanced sideways at Miss Chapple. “I wouldn’t do such a thing now.”

She met his glance. “Of course not.”

They went through another gate. One more field remained, bare and fallow, and then the wooded rise to Creed Hall. “You do a lot of walking?” he asked Miss Chapple as they strode across the paddock. Her cheeks were pink with exertion, but she wasn’t out of breath.

“Every day,” she said cheerfully. “A circuit of the park.”

“Creed Hall has a park?”

“Woods and a lake.”

By the time they reached the far side of the field, the rain was coming down heavily. It didn’t fall straight down from the sky, but came at them slanting, striking their faces beneath the brims of their hats. The drops were hard and stingingly cold, almost sleet.

They paused at the bottom of the rise, beneath the shelter of a large, gnarled oak. Water dripped from its branches. Miss Chapple wiped her face with a corner of her cloak. “Toby always used to say that Creed Hall was the ugliest building in England.”

Edward followed her gaze. The Hall was visible through the trees. The narrow windows and frowning roof hadn’t been designed with beauty in mind. More than half the windows were bricked over, giving the impression that its inhabitants were trying to shut out the world.

“Toby didn’t like coming here.” Miss Chapple said. “The last time he visited, he left after only two days.” He heard sadness in her voice, saw it in the way she pressed her lips together for a brief second. “He was meant to stay for a week.”

“Why did he leave?”

“They argued.” She pulled a face. “Uncle Arthur wanted Toby to resign his commission and become a curate. He said the curate’s position in Soddy Morton was coming open. Toby said he’d rather hang himself.”

Edward grunted. It sounded exactly like something Toby would have said. He looked up at Creed Hall again and grimaced. “I should hate to live here.”

Miss Chapple hesitated, and then said, “I consider myself very fortunate to be at Creed Hall.”

“Er . . . of course you do.” Water trickled down his cheek. He wiped it away with a wet sleeve.

“My father suffered a reversal on the ’Change shortly before he died. If my uncle hadn’t taken me in, I might have ended up in the poorhouse.” Miss Chapple’s light tone and the upward twist of her lips turned the last sentence into a joke.

Edward glanced up at Creed Hall again. Better than a poorhouse, yes . . . but it was a grim, lonely place to call home.

Pity stirred in his chest again.

They began to climb, trudging through leaf mold and mud. The wood felt like a cemetery—the bare skeletons of trees, the mounds of dead leaves. Even the muffled clop of Trojan’s hooves seemed funereal. Rain dripped off the brim of Edward’s hat. The ascent made his leg ache. He began to limp.

“Mr. Kane? Are you all right?”

Absurdly, he felt himself flush, as if the limp was something to be ashamed of. “I broke my leg at Waterloo.”

Miss Chapple halted. “Should you be walking?”

Edward halted, too. “Waterloo was more than five months ago.”

“That’s not an answer,” she said tartly. “If the injury hurts, then you shouldn’t be walking.”

Edward shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt much.”

Miss Chapple snorted. “Get up on that horse you hired,” she told him, “and ride.”

Edward grinned. He was beginning to like Miss Chapple. “You remind me of my brigade major.”

Her face became expressionless. “Your brigade major?”

Edward kicked himself mentally. i***t. “I . . . uh, it was a compliment, Miss Chapple. Lithgow was a grand chap.” And he was a man, you lummock.

Miss Chapple’s eyebrows lifted briefly in silent skepticism. “You should ride, Mr. Kane,” she said, turning away from him and beginning to climb the hill again. “There’s no need for you to keep me company.”

Edward grimaced and followed her, tugging Trojan’s reins. After three steps his leg began to protest again. “I didn’t mean what you think, Miss Chapple.” What did she think? That he thought her bossy? Man-like?

She stopped and looked back at him. “Mr. Kane, you don’t need to explain yourself.”

“Yes,” Edward said, halting alongside her. “I do. It wasn’t my intention to insult you.”

“I’m not insulted.”

Yes, you are.

“What I meant was . . . It was a joke, Miss Chapple. I beg your pardon. I . . . I’ve been around men too much. I’ve lost the knack of speaking with ladies.”

Her eyebrows rose again. “You’ve lost the knack of speaking with ladies?”

“Yes.”

“And tell me, Mr. Kane, what does the knack of speaking with ladies entail?” Her voice was light, polite—but something in her inflection told him he’d strayed onto dangerous ground.

“Uh . . .” Edward said, aware that he’d blundered again. Pretty compliments? No, she might take that as an insult against her s*x. Mincing one’s words? No, that could be taken as an insult, too. “Uh . . .”

Miss Chapple’s mouth tucked in at the corners, as if she was suppressing a smile. “It’s all right, Mr. Kane. You don’t need to answer. And for heaven’s sake, get up on that horse of yours and ride!”