Nicola Cornick - The Chaperon Bride

Annis opened the carriage door and let the steps down. The sun felt hot on her face and she could feel the warmth of the road beneath her feet. She tilted the brim of her bonnet to shield her face, feeling grateful that today she had abandoned her chaperon’s turbans for a straw hat and a light blue muslin gown.

‘I am well, thank you, Mr Castle.’ Annis shook hands with tollkeeper. ‘I am back in Harrogate for the summer, you know, and shall be staying at Starbeck next month. But you…’ Annis gestured to the tollhouse. ‘What happened to the school, Mr Castle?’

A strange expression crossed the tollkeeper’s face and for a moment Annis could have sworn it was guilt.

‘I can’t do both, Miss Annis. Besides, Mr Ingram pays me well to take the tolls for him. Nine shillings a week I’m making here.’ He shuffled, turning back to the coachman. ‘That’s ninepence for a carriage and pair, if you please.’

There was a clatter of wheels on the track behind them and then a horse and cart drew up on the road beside the carriage. The carter and his mate jumped down and started to unhitch the horse from between the shaft. A richly pungent smell of dung filled the air. Mr Castle, who had been about to move the chain from across the road so that Annis’ carriage could pass, gave an exclamation and hurried across to the cart.

‘Now see here, Jem Marchant, you can’t do that!’

The carter pushed his hat back from his brow and scratched his head. ‘Do what, Mr Castle?’

‘You can’t unhitch the horse. Horse and cart is fivepence together.’ Castle looked at the cart. ‘Sixpence, as you’ve got narrow wheels.’

‘Horse and cart are only thruppence apart!’ the carter returned triumphantly. ‘None of us can afford to pay Mr Ingram’s prices. Daylight robbery, so it is.’

The aroma of manure was almost enough to make Annis scramble back into the carriage and put the window up, but she suddenly caught sight of what looked like a pile of bricks hidden beneath the manure and leaned over for a closer look. The carter’s accomplice gave her a wink and shovelled some more dung over to hide it. Castle walked around the back of the cart and looked suspiciously at the load.

‘What’ve you got here?’

‘What does it look like?’ The carter started to lead the horse towards the tollgate, tipping his hat to Annis as he went. ‘Mornin’, ma’am.’

‘Good morning,’ Annis returned. A small crowd of villagers was gathering now to see what was going on, appearing from the fields and lanes as though drawn by some mysterious silent message. A few came running up the path from Eynhallow village to see what was happening, whilst the farm workers abandoned their tools and hastened over to the tollbooth. It seemed to Annis as though they were scenting trouble and had come to watch.

The workmen, meanwhile, were leaning on their spades, the carter’s mate was grinning, hands on hips, and Ellis Benson looked as though he thought he should intervene to support the tollkeeper, but really did not want to get involved. The carter unhooked the chain from across the road and urged the horse through.

‘Tell you what, Harry Castle, you’ve made yourselves no friends taking coin from that Ingram. Bloody thief, that man is.’

Castle was sweating, the beads of perspiration running down his face.

‘I’m only trying to make an honest shilling from an honest day’s work, unlike you, Jem Marchant! What you got under that manure, then? Something you should be paying for, I’ll warrant!’

‘Why don’t you look then, nosy?’ The carter’s mate stuck his chest out aggressively. ‘Don’t like to get your hands dirty, do you?’ He spat out the straw he was chewing with deliberate insult in the direction of the builders. ‘Incomers!’ he said with disgust. ‘Ingram ’as to bring men in and pay them over the odds to do his dirty work for ’im.’

A growl went through the ranks of the assembled workmen. Despite the hot sunlight the atmosphere seemed suddenly chill. The workmen were shuffling and looking as though they would like to use their spades on the carter and his mate, and only a sharp word from Benson held them back. The villagers were also angry, swaying like corn with the wind coming up. Annis realised that at any moment the whole situation could go up like a tinderbox.

She backed towards the carriage, wishing now that she had not got down in the first place. The movement drew the attention of the carter’s burly mate.

‘Ain’t that Mr Lafoy’s carriage?’ He looked at Annis with sudden suspicion. ‘They’re all ’ere today, ain’t they? All Ingram’s vultures.’ He took a menacing step towards Annis.

‘Now just a minute,’ Castle said, the sweat dripping off his chin as he looked anxiously from Annis to the crowd, ‘this is Lady Wycherley from Starbeck, and no enemy of yourn. She may be a Lafoy, but she’s got nothing to do with Ingram.’

It was enough to give the carter’s mate pause. He tugged his forelock a little bashfully. ‘Beg pardon, ma’am. Dare say you cannot help being Mr Lafoy’s cousin.’

‘Not really,’ Annis said. ‘It was something I was born with.’

The carter tied his horse to a fence post and came bustling up. He thrust his face close to Annis’s own. ‘All the same, ma’am, you tell that Mr Lafoy that we don’t like turncoats up here in the valley. If he shows his face around here, he’ll be sorry—’

Ellis Benson started forward, obliged to intervene at last. ‘How dare you threaten Lady Wycherley, man—’

It was the spark that set light to the tinder. Within a second it seemed to Annis that the fists were flying as the villagers pelted Ingram’s workmen with stones and the carter and his mate set about Benson and Castle with gusto. Annis sidestepped the carter’s wildly swinging right fist and tried to gain the shelter of the carriage, but just as she reached it a stone hit the Lafoy crest on the bodywork beside her head and splintered into pieces. Annis felt a sharp sting along her cheekbone and put up a hand in astonishment. Her fingers came away with blood on them.

There was a drumming of hooves on the road and the dust swirled up. Annis spun around. An arm went about her waist, scooping her off her feet, and the next moment she was on the saddlebow of a huge bay stallion, whose rider brought the dancing creature sharply under control with a single flick of the reins. The whole experience, so quick and so sudden, literally took her breath away; looking down from what seemed a great height, she realised that it had had a similar effect on the carter and his mate. Both had dropped their fists and were gaping up at her rescuer as though the hand of God had intervened.

‘What the devil is going on here?’ Adam Ashwick’s incisive tones cut across the fight and brought all the men there to their senses. They fell apart from each other, panting heavily, hanging their heads, dropping the stones and shovels that had served them as weapons. Castle put up his sleeve to staunch the blood running from a cut on his forehead. Benson, who seemed to have had the best of the fight owing to a promising amateur career in pugilism, straightened up and pushed the hair back from his forehead.

‘Lord Ashwick!’

‘Benson.’ Adam’s tone was menacing. ‘I do not believe that your employer pays you to come to fisticuffs on the king’s highway?’

Benson’s glance turned to Annis. ‘I beg your pardon, Lord Ashwick. I was attempting to defend Lady Wycherley.’

‘Very commendable of you, Benson.’ There was amusement now in Adam Ashwick’s tone. ‘You may safely leave Lady Wycherley’s defence to me now.’

Annis felt his breath stir her hair. She tried to turn to look at him, but he was holding her too tight and too close, with one arm still about her waist and the other holding the reins, and effectively trapping her in front of him. His chest was hard against her back and Annis could feel the beat of his heart. She kept very still.