* * *
Tavistock did have an inn. I didn’t have much time to enjoy its amenities, though. We arrived in the village at midday, and Captain Mainwaring set off at once to deliver his current crop of dispatches. He returned within the hour, though, and told me to fetch my cloak.
“Why?” I said, bewildered. “Where are we going?”
He glanced at me indifferently and said “To Bellhurst Manor.”
“Right,” I said. It sounded a trifle more impressive than my current surroundings, which featured several soldiers playing at chuck-a-luck on the floor, a flea-ridden mongrel asleep by the fire, and a strong smell of hops.
The manor house, without regard to the natural beauty of its site, stubbornly turned its back on the open meadows and huddled inland instead, facing the stark cliffside.
The drive was straight, short, and unadorned, unlike the lovely curving approaches to French manors. But the entrance was equipped with two utilitarian stone pillars, each bearing the heraldic device of the owner. I stared at it as my horse clopped past, trying to place it. A cat—perhaps a leopard?—couchant, with a lily in its paw. It was familiar, I knew. But whose?
There was a stir in the long grass near the gate, and I caught a quick glimpse of pale blue eyes as a hunched bundle of rags scuttled into the shadows, away from the churn of the horses’ hooves. Something about the ragged beggar seemed faintly familiar, too. Perhaps I was merely hallucinating; grasping at anything that didn’t remind me of English soldiers.
The escort waited in the dooryard, not bothering to dismount, while I mounted the steps with Captain Mainwaring, and waited while he hammered at the door, rather wondering what might be on the other side of it.
“Mrs. Beauchamp?” The butler, if that’s what he was, looked rather as though he suspected the worst. No doubt he was right.
“Yes,” I said. “Er, whose house is this?”
But even as I asked, I raised my eyes and looked into the gloom of the inner hall. A face stared back at me, doe-eyes wide and startled.
Mary Hawkins.