Trusting Miss Trentham

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Icarus traveled post to Basingstoke on the sixth, arriving at dusk. On the seventh, he walked around the market town, inquiring after Mr. Green at the inns and looking for a hostelry for himself and Miss Trentham. By noon, he’d found a suitable establishment—on a quiet backstreet, modest but clean—and booked rooms for himself, his wife, and his wife’s maid for four nights, plus a private parlor. He didn’t find Green. That afternoon, he posted back to Frimley, halfway between Basingstoke and Chertsey, where he canceled Miss Trentham’s booking from Frimley to Andover the following day, and arranged instead for a carriage to convey himself and his wife to Basingstoke.

On the morning of the eighth, he hastened to Chertsey. Midday found him in the yard of the King’s Head, dressed as a servant. Not a liveried footman, but a sober and respectable steward. Alongside him, equally sober and respectable, was a young washerwoman, clad in her Sunday best. Hired that morning, the washerwoman had professed herself quite happy to assist in a clandestine tryst. Course I won’t tell a soul, she’d said, accepting a silver crown. If you want to put your leg over someone else’s wife, who am I to mind?

Just after noon, a post-chaise swept into the yard, drawn by sweating horses. The ostlers ran forward, the postilions dismounted; all was bustle and noise.

“This it?” the washerwoman asked.

“Yes.”

Two ladies descended from the carriage: Miss Trentham, cool and aloof in dove gray, and a short middle-aged woman with blunt features and a brisk, no-nonsense manner.

Icarus stepped forward, and bowed. “Miss Trentham?” he said, in a servant’s polite, uninflected voice.

Miss Trentham ate her luncheon at the King’s Head. By the time she’d finished this repast, the maid had been borne off by her sister and the washerwoman had departed. Icarus handed Miss Trentham into the post-chaise, and swung up on the horse he’d hired.

Chertsey to Frimley was a little over twelve miles. Not far, by a soldier’s reckoning, but more than far enough for a man who’d spent six weeks confined to bed with the fever. When Icarus dismounted at the posting inn in Frimley, his legs were shaking.

Miss Trentham and her outrider arrived in Frimley; Mr. and Mrs. Reid departed from it. Icarus sank gratefully onto the soft squab seat across from Miss Trentham. Damn it, he was as weak as an old man.

No, he was as weak as a dead man—because that’s what he was: dead. An animated corpse with one task to perform before he could crawl back into his grave.

Frimley to Basingstoke was almost eighteen miles. They accomplished the journey in silence. Not a chatterer, Miss Trentham. Icarus stared out the window and watched the sky darken, while his thoughts ground through their inevitable circuit: Vimeiro, the ambush, the executions, and finally, the creek.

It always came back to the creek. Everything came back to the creek.

When the carriage slowed to enter Basingstoke, Icarus roused himself from his memories. “We’re putting up at the Plough.” His voice was harsh. He cleared his throat and strove for a milder tone. “It’s plain, but clean. I hope you’ll be comfortable there.”

“I have no doubt I will.” Miss Trentham didn’t sound tired; she sounded alert and cheerful. “What should we call one another, Mr. Reid? If we need to speak in front of the servants.”

“I shall go by my own name; you may choose whatever name you prefer.”

Miss Trentham was silent for a moment. “The truth, I think. You may call me Letty.”

“My name is Icarus.”

“Icarus?” The coach was now too dark for him to see her expression, but he thought she sounded faintly surprised. “An unusual name.”

Icarus shrugged. “A family name.”

The post-chaise deposited them at the Plough. The innkeeper bustled out, short and stout and bobbing his head. “Mr. Reid, Mrs. Reid, welcome, welcome. A cold night. I’ve lit the fire in your parlor. Come in, come in.”

They stepped inside. Icarus watched England’s wealthiest heiress examine her surroundings—the simple furnishings, the humble drugget carpet. No disdain came to her face. Rather, her expression was wide-eyed and curious.

“My wife’s maid took ill this morning,” Icarus said. “We hope she’ll be well enough to join us tomorrow.”

The innkeeper arranged his face into a sympathetic smile. “Not to worry, Mr. Reid. My daughter will be pleased to wait on your wife. A good girl, she is. I’m sure you’ll find no fault with her.”

Miss Trentham murmured her gratitude.

The innkeeper led them upstairs. Their bedchambers were side by side, low-ceilinged and old-fashioned, with tiny-paned windows.

“Charming,” Miss Trentham said, with apparent sincerity.

They ate dinner in the parlor he’d hired, just the two of them. The repast was substantial, but simple: fried sweetbreads and a raised mutton pie, with curd pudding to follow. The curtains were drawn, a fire burned in the grate, candles glowed in the sconces, and it was as intimate as if they truly were husband and wife.

Icarus laid his knife and fork neatly on his plate and glanced at Miss Trentham. An unmarried lady. An heiress.

Miss Trentham didn’t look like either of those things. She looked like someone’s wife, cool and mature and well into her twenties. Her husband was clearly a man of only moderate means; her clothing had none of the embellishments a wealthy woman would sport.

“Is that all you’re going to eat?” Miss Trentham said.

“I have no appetite.” It was another of the many things he’d lost at Vimeiro.

“Nonsense! You’ve not eaten enough to keep a sparrow alive. No wonder you’re so thin. Eat!”

Icarus looked down at his almost-full plate. “I’m not hungry.”

“Eat!”

Icarus was too weary to argue. He sighed, and picked up his knife and fork again, and ate another sweetbread.

“And some pie,” Miss Trentham said, in a tone that brooked no argument.

Icarus ate some pie, too.

Miss Trentham didn’t cease harassing him until his plate was half empty. “You must have some curd pudding, too,” she said firmly.

“I’ll be ill if I eat any more,” Icarus said.

Miss Trentham cast him a sharp glance, but didn’t argue; she must have heard the truth in his words.

Icarus went to bed with his stomach uncomfortably full. Perhaps it was the food, or perhaps the exhaustion of riding twelve miles on horseback, but he dropped almost instantly to sleep.

He fell asleep in Basingstoke, but woke in Vimeiro, face down in a creek. Someone knelt on his back. Hard fingers gripped his hair, knuckles digging into his scalp. He fought, bucking and twisting until it seemed that his heart would burst with effort, but he couldn’t break the rope that bound his arms behind him, couldn’t dislodge the man on his back, couldn’t tear his hair free.

“C’est vrai?” a voice snarled in his ear. “Dis-moi! Tell me!”

The knuckles pressed harder into his scalp—and shoved his head underwater.

Icarus bucked and fought. Water filled his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his lungs. He was choking, drowning—

He woke abruptly, lurching upright, fighting with the bedclothes, lungs heaving, a scream in his throat.

The room was dark, and for a panic-stricken moment he thought he truly was back in Vimeiro—and then reason caught up with him. His arms and legs were unbound. He was in a nightshirt, not a uniform. He was in bed. He was dry.

Icarus dragged air into his lungs. With heroic effort, he managed not to vomit up his dinner.

After a moment, he lay back down. His body shook uncontrollably, deep wracking shudders, and his throat felt as raw as if he’d been screaming. He wiped his face with trembling hands, smearing away sweat and tears.

Slowly, his breathing steadied. Slowly, his heart stopped its frantic, futile pounding.

At last, the shaking died to mere tremors. Clumsily, Icarus reached for the tinderbox and lit a candle.

The tiny, golden flame showed him the bedchamber: beamed ceiling, four-poster bed, drugget rug.

There were no bodies. No harsh-faced French soldiers crowding round.

And no creek.

Icarus fumbled for his watch on the bedside table. Two o’clock. The longest sleep he’d had since Vimeiro.