Authors: Amanda Scott
“Indeed.” Mollie’s expression softened at the thought of Lady Bridget Colporter, who had shown her nothing but kindness over the past four, sometimes unutterably difficult years. “I think it is a great pity she was never allowed to marry.”
“What? And leave poor Papa to fend for himself! Lord knows Mama, what with one miscarriage after another, was unsuited to the task. I daresay she went to her reward with nothing but relief after Harry was born. Aunt Biddy had all the care of Papa, the four of us, and Hawkstone Towers in her dish. How can you be so unfeeling as to think Papa ought to have shared some of that burden?” The gray eyes twinkled merrily, but Mollie glared at him.
“That was so like him. First to send your mother to an early grave with all his demands upon her for sons and more sons, and then to make poor Biddy into a near prisoner to cater to his needs. Your father, Ramsay, was naught but a selfish, contumacious old bastard!”
“Tut, tut,” scolded his lordship. “Such language from a gently nurtured female.”
Mollie chuckled, the grim lines in her face smoothing at once. “As if you’ve never heard me call him a bastard before.”
“Not bastard. Contumacious. Where do you come by such delightful words, m’dear?”
Laughter gurgled up. “And you with an Oxford education!”
“A near education. Not done yet, remember? One more term. But now that we’re done mourning dearest Papa, I mean to enjoy the Season and then follow Prinny to Brighton with the rest of the swells before I bury myself in books again. A man about town, that’s me, as of next week.”
Mollie became serious again. “Do you think Hawk will approve of your remaining out of school till Michaelmas term, Ramsay?”
“Much good it will do him to disapprove,” responded that young gentleman recklessly. “He can scarcely stop me.”
They rode in silence for some moments. Despite the sun’s rays filtering through the thick, overhanging trees, little warmth penetrated to the roadway, and Mollie began to feel chilled. Reaching back to unknot the leather thongs that held her heavy duffle coat in a roll tied to her saddle, she deftly shook out the coat and began to slip her arms into the sleeves. Her horse was well-trained, but it was an awkward business nonetheless, so she smiled gratefully when Lord Ramsay reached out to assist her.
“What did you think of your first mill?” he asked.
“I enjoyed the crowd’s enthusiasm,” Mollie replied frankly as she shrugged into the coat, “but the action itself was too brutal for my taste. Why, if the two men had not been of different colors, there would have been no way to determine one from the other by the tenth round, so bloodied were their features.”
“But consider the skill, Mollie! The sheer manliness of the sport! To see two pugilists, full of gaiety and confidence, nobly opposing one another, to prove which is the better man. Why, ’tis a sport enjoyed as much by the ragtag and bobtail as by the flowers of society, something all men can enjoy together without thought for class or standing. ’Tis a most democratic entertainment, m’dear.”
Mollie grinned at his enthusiasm. “If it is merely an entertainment, Ramsay, then why do they not take steps to protect the combatants? Their skill, gaiety, and confidence could be as easily displayed if their knuckles were padded, and their heads and bodies protected from serious injury. A fencing match, after all, may be just as thoroughly enjoyed by the spectators when the foils are buttoned as when they are not. More so, in fact, for one may concentrate the more fully upon the skill of the fencers when one need not fear to see one or the other spitted before one’s very eyes. Why, until the Irishman began to sit up and rub his head, I feared the Black had truly killed him. And in another match, someone may well do so.”
Lord Ramsay was staring at her in astonishment. “You would put padded gloves on such men and rig them out in armor? For the love of heaven, show some sense. Where would the sport be in that? How could the Black win any sort of decisive victory if he could not even knock his opponent down? Cover his hands! My God, Mollie, do not let any other fancier of the sport hear you suggest such a ridiculous course.”
Abashed, Mollie begged his pardon for her foolishness, and they rode on together in perfect harmony. But it was not long before she found her thoughts returning to her husband. She wondered, as she often did, just when he would see his way clear to coming home again to take his rightful place as master of Hawkstone Towers.
Four years before, not two weeks after their wedding, the news had reached London that General Arthur Wellesley, who had already begun to acquire the charisma that attends extraordinary leadership, had replaced Sir John Moore as Commander of the British Army in Portugal. Men insisted it was the beginning of what would undoubtedly be one of the most brilliant campaigns in military history, and Hawk had immediately announced his intention to be part of it.
Mollie had been merely nineteen at the time, and as the former Lady Margaret Hazeldell, daughter of the powerful Earl of Rutledge, she had been accustomed to having her own wishes put foremost by a host of besotted admirers. Even Hawk, though he had never pandered to her wishes quite so blatantly as her other beaux, had still done all in his power to win her. It had therefore come as a shock to her to discover that he could leave her flat, just to follow some whim of his own. She was certain now, with the gift of hindsight, that she had merely been another challenge to a man who reveled in challenges. He had won her in the face of major opposition, but once she was safely his, he had rallied immediately to pick up the next gauntlet.
Hawk had promised, when he had left her with his awful father, that he would not be gone long. He was as certain as could be, he said, that Bonaparte would be routed in a trice and that, in the meantime, Mollie would enjoy reigning over Hawkstone Towers, exchanging confidences with gentle Lady Bridget, and helping to mind the then five-year-old Lord Henry Colporter.
Mollie shuddered now as she recalled those first dreadful weeks in Kent after Hawk had gone. The old Marquess of Hawkstone had been a demanding, temperamental tyrant who wanted all about him to run smoothly without so much as having to lift a finger to assist in the running. Mollie had not found it difficult to understand why Hawk had previously spent as little time as possible at his family home, where his every move and opinion were belligerently questioned and cross-questioned by so harsh a parent. But understanding his wish to leave and forgiving him for leaving her had been two entirely different things.
At first there had been occasional letters from him, and she knew he had reached the Peninsula in time to take part in General Wellesley’s famous victory at Talavera. Then the army had moved into Spain, and there were fewer letters. Then none at all. When the dispatches arrived in London after the battle of Salamanca, his name had been listed among those wounded, and Mollie had been frantic for nearly a week. But then a letter arrived from Hawk, informing her that he was not seriously injured and had chosen to recuperate in a village near the Portuguese border. Thus, he wrote, he would be able to return more quickly to action when his wounds healed.
There was nothing but a brief note or two after that until several months after the old marquess relieved them of his presence by choking to death on a fishbone one night. He had expired in the midst of berating Lady Bridget for failing to note that several stones in the postern-gate causeway had been loosened by a recent storm, and it had been Lady Bridget’s fluttery protest that she never had reason to travel upon that causeway which had so incensed him. Consequently, Mollie had had her hands full for some time after the tragic event, trying to convince poor Lady Bridget that she had not murdered the marquess. When Mollie finally had a moment to consider the matter, she had assumed that Hawk would return as soon as word of his father’s death reached him. However, from some cause or other, it had been nearly a month before he learned of the situation, and when he did, he had simply scrawled a note informing her that he was too much occupied to return at once and advising her to rely upon his uncle, Lord Andrew Colporter, to attend to any matters of business that his bailiff could not cope with.
Having kept a close watch over the dispatches as they appeared in the London papers, Mollie had no doubt that Wellesley, now Viscount Wellington, might well have failed at Madrid without Hawk’s invaluable assistance, so she was able to swallow the fact that her husband was too busy to come home immediately, but she could not so easily accept his advice with regard to Lord Andrew.
Since by that time she knew as much as anyone and more than most about the running of the Colporter estates, and since she quite heartily despised both the sanctimonious Lord Andrew and his Polly-pry wife, she ignored Hawk’s suggestion with a nearly clear conscience. Because her conscience was not quite so clear with regard to certain other matters, she also breathed a sigh of relief at the delay, and went about her business as usual. Two months later, concerned by the fact that Lady Bridget still wore an expression of constant anxiety on her plump, normally pleasant countenance, Mollie had ruthlessly dragged the poor, feebly-protesting woman off to Margate, hoping the crisp sea breezes would restore the roses to her cheeks. That she had also taken the opportunity to liven up her own dull situation was a matter that she knew might well cause her an uncomfortable moment or two at some vague point in the future.
A little smile tugged at her lips now as she remembered Lord Ramsay’s earlier teasing reference to the episode. He had never blamed her for her behavior then. He had, in fact, asserted that he couldn’t imagine why anyone should expect for a moment that she ought to mourn his father’s passing. Anyone in his right mind, he had said, would expect the entire family to rejoice. But Mollie knew she had behaved badly. Others knew it, too. And if Lady Andrew Colporter had not immediately sent Hawk a full, undoubtedly exaggerated report of Mollie’s activities, then some other of his busybody relations must have done so. She sighed deeply, then glanced over to find Lord Ramsay regarding her quizzically.
“Tired, Moll?”
“A little,” she admitted, “but I was just thinking of Lady Andrew and the things she has no doubt amused herself by writing to your brother.”
“A pox on the woman. Has Hawk…Never mind. None of my affair,” he said hastily.
Molly smiled at him. “I have no secrets, Ramsay. Has he ever mentioned hearing anything? Isn’t that what you were about to ask?” He nodded. “Never,” Mollie said. “Of course, he has written so infrequently and never very much to the purpose.”
“Do you write to him?”
Color crept into her cheeks as she remembered the long, rather childish letters she had written after his departure, but she answered steadily enough, “Not for a long time. Or at least not the way you mean. I wrote to inform him when Haycock caught those poachers on the north ridge and when we had the causeway repaired, and last year when Mr. Brewer questioned my authority to draw funds for the refurbishing of Lady Bridget’s rooms when we returned from Margate. He replied to Mr. Brewer very quickly on that occasion, I’m glad to say.”
“I detect my uncle’s fine hand there,” Lord Ramsay murmured. “Punishing you for your raking, no doubt.”
“Punishing Lady Bridget, you mean,” Mollie returned angrily. “He read her the most dreadful scold. As if she could order my coming and going or would try to do so. I am certain I told you all about it when you were down for the long vacation.”
“You did, and I thought then as I think now that we’d all of us do better without Uncle Andrew’s interference. Why, even Gwen was saying, only last week when I passed through Pillings on my way here, that—”
But what his older sister had had to say was destined to go, for the moment at any rate, unrepeated, for Lord Ramsay broke off suddenly and gave his full attention to the roadway in front of them.
“I say, Mollie,” he said after a moment or so, while she watched him curiously, “I think we’ve got company up yonder.”
“What makes you think so?” She had noticed a number of tracks in the mud, but had given them little thought. The road was fairly well-traveled by the men from Hawkstone.
Lord Ramsay’s brow was furrowed as he concentrated his attention downward. “There shouldn’t be so many tracks as these. You forget the rain washed the road clear. There were a few ruts this morning, but scarcely any tracks beyond the ones we made ourselves.”
“Still it would take but one small group of horsemen coming from Hawkstone to make a number of tracks,” she pointed out. But then, even before he could speak, she realized a fact that contradicted her suggestion. “All the tracks are heading toward the castle, aren’t they, Ramsay?”
“They are.” There was a slightly grimmer note in his voice. “And they are fresh, too, Moll. Only observe that pile of dung yonder and the scrape there on that stone. A horseshoe made that recently enough that it’s still white, and you can see tiny bits of metal glinting. There’s another. If we’d been riding at a normal pace, I daresay we’d have overtaken them by now.” He reined in, cocking his head. “Listen.”
Mollie obeyed. In the distance, through the trees, she could hear the faint jingle of spurs and harness. There were riders ahead. “What shall we do, Ramsay?”
“Well, we can’t risk your being seen, that’s flat,” he replied. “And the only place they can be going from here is Hawkstone. We’ll have to cut through the woods and across the ridge to the postern causeway. Even if we hurry, we’ll be only a hop and a skip ahead of them.”
He wheeled his horse into the woods and gave a nudge of his spurs to urge it to greater speed. With a grin, Mollie followed, keeping her head lowered and attempting at the same time to keep the curly-brimmed beaver from flying off her head. They seemed to fly under rain-soaked, low-hanging branches, over fallen logs, through nearly marshy meadows, and across the gurgling, storm-swollen brook that fed into the river below, but both riders knew every grass and stone in these woods, and they suffered no mishap, though the horses’ flanks were heaving and well-splattered with mud by the time they emerged into the clearing by the lakeshore and saw the postern causeway straight ahead of them.