The Reluctant Escort. Mary Nichols

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

       Copyright

       Chapter One

      1816

      When Duncan first saw Molly, it was an early summer day, with the sun shining and the skylarks hovering above the heath. She was walking on the grass alongside the track with her shoes and stockings in her hand and the hem of her striped dimity skirt wet and muddy. Her cottager hat had fallen down her back on its ribbons and her soft blonde hair lay tangled on her shoulders. He took her for a child, a very pretty child.

      She looked up when she heard the slow clop of the horse’s hooves behind her and brushed her wayward hair from her eyes to watch him approach. Strangers were a rarity at Stacey Manor, it being on a promontory of land which was not en route to anywhere, and she concluded he was probably lost. His black stallion, seen with the eyes of someone who adored horses, was a beauty, strong and muscular and somehow out of keeping with the look of the man.

      He was a rough sort of fellow, with a half-grown beard and clothes which were crumpled and dusty as if he had slept in them. But he held himself upright and his hands, holding the reins with a light touch, were brown and strong. There were lines about his dark eyes which could have been caused by frequent laughter or continually squinting in strong sunlight. A soldier home from the Peninsular War, she deduced, and immediately imbued him with the character of a hero.

      In her mind’s eye she imagined the heat and smoke of battle, heard the gunfire, saw the enemy hordes and the man, slashing this way and that with his sword and emerging triumphant. The only thing wrong with that vision was that the man’s coat was not scarlet but a drab brown and he was not carrying a sword but a rifle in a holster on his saddle.

      She waited, expecting him to stop to ask the way, but though his lips twitched into a smile as he passed he did not speak nor even acknowledge her, which piqued her. She hardly ever spoke to anyone but Lady Connaught or the servants and the chance of a little conversation with someone new, however brief, was something to be savoured.

      She watched as he continued unhurriedly on his way and then sat on the side of the road to put on her stockings and shoes. Her feet were still wet from paddling in the brook and the footwear was tight and uncomfortable.

      She had seen the green and blue flash of a kingfisher swooping along the bank and had waded into the shallow water to see it better. She ought to have known she would startle it and it would abandon its prey to sit in a tree overhanging the water until she had left its domain. And then she had spotted a trout under the bank and tried to catch it as she had seen Jeremy Bland, the poacher, do, but it, like the kingfisher, was gone in the blinking of an eye.

      She had turned for home, knowing she would be in for another scolding from her godmother if she saw the state she was in. ‘Molly Madcap’, Lady Connaught called her. And though she grumbled and threatened, Molly knew her bark was far worse than her bite and she would escape punishment. Besides, what could her ladyship do, except lock her in her room? And that was easy to escape from. There was enough ivy clinging to the walls of the old house to make a secure ladder from her window to the ground.

      There was no other punishment available, no social occasions she could ban her from attending, no friends she could be forbidden to see, no shops she could be barred from visiting, unless you went to Norwich or King’s Lynn, which the old lady did twice a year. Molly hadn’t been staying with her long enough to have enjoyed that experience yet, but she didn’t hold out much hope that it would be the adventure she craved. She was bored. Even the stranger had ignored her. She might as well be invisible.

      Once in sight of the big house, standing on its promontory, four-square to the North Sea, she hurried her pace, darting between the scattered shrubs which were euphemistically called a garden, and in at the kitchen door.

      ‘Lord a’mercy, Miss Molly!’ Cook exclaimed. ‘What have you been up to now?’

      ‘Trying to poach a trout for dinner.’ Molly’s smile lit her face; it was the kind of smile that made everyone around her feel more cheerful, however ill their humour had been beforehand. It started in rosy lips and even white teeth and ended in blue eyes, bright as cornflowers. Cook could not resist it, and even the Dowager Lady Connaught found it difficult to maintain her severity. ‘But I’m not sad it escaped. It was too beautiful to be cooked and eaten.’

      ‘Seventeen years old, you are,’ Cook reminded her. ‘Seventeen. Some young ladies are married at your age. Will you never grow up?’ It was a rhetorical question. Cook knew perfectly well why Molly was still so childlike. It was her mother’s fault. Harriet could never stand competition and Molly showed promise of being even more beautiful than her parent. So the poor girl had been kept a child for as long as possible, but when that would no longer serve she had been brought here to stay with the old lady while Harriet herself had set off for London to find husband number four.

      ‘Has Aunt Margaret asked for me?’ Lady Connaught was not really her aunt, but a cousin twice removed, but that was how Molly’s mother addressed her and Molly, who had been named after her, had been told to do the same.

      ‘No, but she will do so soon. We have a visitor…’

      ‘A visitor?’ Molly brightened, thinking of the stranger who had passed her on the road, and then wondered why her ladyship should entertain such a one. He had come to bring her some stupendous news: a long-lost love found. No, her godmother was too old for such fancies. Then news of some distant battle in which a relative had distinguished himself? But as far as Molly knew, her ladyship had no relatives except the Earl of Connaught who was her grandson, and he lived at Foxtrees on the borders of Hertfordshire and Essex.

      Perhaps the stranger had been wounded and had come to be nursed back to health. Oh, that would be best, then he would stay a little, instead of disappearing as all visitors to Stacey Manor were wont to do. ‘Who is it?’

      ‘You’ll see. I suggest you go and change and do your hair and be quick about it.’

      Molly crept up the servants’ stairs to her own room and stripped off her soiled clothes. She washed and dressed again in a pale blue sarcenet gown with a shawl collar of white lace, white stockings and blue kid shoes, then set about brushing out the tangles in her hair. When it was once again lying smooth and shining on her shoulders, she sat down and surveyed herself in the looking-glass, wishing she didn’t look so young; Lady Connaught’s guest would hardly converse with her unless she could make herself look interesting and intelligent. Perhaps it would help if she put her hair up.

      She