The Scent of Danger by Fiona Buckley

Author:Fiona Buckley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448303830
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2019-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

The Wrong Romance

Our invitation to dine at Baines’ home was for the next day and I would have thought it a waste of time and tried to get out of it, except that Baines had the rest of Peter Gray’s papers and although I didn’t expect much if anything to come of it, I still wanted to see them if I could.

As soon as Brockley and I had returned from our exhausting double journey, we found that Joyce and Dale had asked for a cold supper to be served in our quarters. While we ate, we talked.

‘Going to see Miles Baines may be useful,’ I said. ‘But after that, I’d like to find out more about Crispin Hanley’s charity for orphans. I’d like to know where the money he raises is really going. We should have tackled that before.’

‘We have been following other scents,’ said Brockley reasonably. ‘At speed and over considerable distances, if I may say so, madam. Even Firefly is tired.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Eddie’s smouldering with disapproval. We brought them in sweating.’

‘And I heard you, madam, coaxing Jaunty to eat up his bran mash like a good boy,’ Brockley said.

‘I like saying goodnight to him. There are worse habits! I don’t really suspect Crispin. If he was the manservant who doctored my cider, I think I would have recognized him. Those teeth!’

‘But we know there must be two of them,’ said Joyce. ‘The other one probably played the serving man.’

While I was at Okehampton, Joyce and Dale had made a start on our new gown for Mildred but it wasn’t finished and in any case, beguiling Miles was not our intention. The next day, Mildred, therefore, was once again arrayed in dove grey. Her parents were both in black, as usual, though as this was supposed to be a happy occasion, Henry Gresham’s doublet had silver buttons and silvery slashings for sleeves and hose, while Catherine’s sleeves had some discreet white slashings.

We set off in good time, for we couldn’t ride fast. I was more wearied by our one-day visit to Okehampton than I wanted to admit and the horses were still tired too. Also, the day was wet, with fine drizzling rain that blurred the moorland out of sight and turned the track to mud. We all had stout cloaks and were glad of them. It passed, however, just as we neared Baines’ House. The moors reappeared and a gleam of sunlight surprised us by displaying the house as unexpectedly beautiful, half-timbered, with patterned red-brick chimneys and a thatched roof which must have been lately renewed, for the thatch was still golden.

But it stood all alone on a heathery hillside. A few fields stretched up the slope behind it but they were dwarfed by the bleak expanses beyond and around them. Where the breaking clouds still cast their shadows, the heather was sombre, and the grey rock outcrops were like the teeth of some underground monster. The house resembled a piece of jewellery that had been accidentally dropped in the street.

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