Louise Allen - Moonlight And Mistletoe

‘Winterbourne Hall.’

The trot soon turned into a walk, for the road was far too dark for her to make out more than a trace of the verge, but the cob seemed both happy to be ridden and confident to stride out in the dark. Even so, the way seemed endless and Hester was beginning to lose sense of both time and place when she reached the barn that she remembered from her visits to the Hall.

It loomed, a dark bulk beside the road, and Hector slowed, turned his head towards it and whinnied.

‘Shh!’ Then another horse answered from the barn. Hester slid down from the saddle and led Hector in. Sure enough there was a shape of a large, dark animal tethered inside. She tied Hector up beside it, leaving the two to exchange cautious sniffs, and made her way out.

The moon was rising, the waxing crescent bold and solid in the sky now. Hester found the entrance to the grounds and began to jog up the hard surface of the driveway, racking her brains to remember whether there were any potholes. There were. Her foot cracked a thin skin of ice on a puddle and she fell, jarring her arms and, tearing through the thin leather of her gloves, skinning her outstretched palms.

‘Oh… stay laces!’ Hester got to her feet, her hands stinging, cold wetness all down one leg, her nose and ears freezing, and contemplated sitting down on the grass and giving way to hysterics. One couldn’t, of course, but the moment she got her hands on that pig-headed, arrogant, reckless man she was going to box his ears.

If, that is, she worried as she started to trudge more cautiously up the drive, if he has not already been caught and Lewis Nugent is not enjoying himself gloating over a housebreaker.

She had left the house, followed Guy on an impulse. Now she realised how much her boy’s raiment restricted her options. She could hardly walk up to the front door and create a diversion dressed like this! Ruefully she acknowledged that she had been inspired by something akin to envy of a man’s freedom to act.

The old house loomed before her, a dark shape against greater darkness. Either no one was at home or they were at the back. Where was the library in relation to the rest of the house? Hester tried to stop worrying and think. Around the back, of course. She set off, managed to find her way at the expense of only two collisions with walls and one with a tree and found herself on a gravelled terrace, which, she recalled, overlooked the gardens. Light showed from the windows sunk half below ground level-the servants’ hail, no doubt. The stones crunched under her feet, the sound like musket fire in the cold, still air. She might as well march along banging a big drum.

The moonlight caught the edge of a low brick wall edging the terrace and Hester tiptoed to it, climbed up and began to balance cautiously along. She was almost level with what she thought must be the library window when a sudden flash of light from within streaked across the terrace and was gone. Someone inside was using a dark lantern.

So Guy had got in, and had done so without, apparently, being heard. Hester closed her eyes on the darkness and tried to recall what she had seen in that flash of light. Yes, a flagged path across the terrace.

She reached the library windows, holding her breath, and ran a hand lightly along the casements until she found one that was ajar. Within the room was dark, then she realised that the curtains must be drawn. Slowly she eased back the window until it stood wide and ran her hand down the wall below it. As she had hoped, there was a point where the brickwork stepped out. With one foot on that, both hands on the window frame and ignoring the pain in her grazed palms, Hester hauled herself up until she could straddle the opening and climb down inside.

She found herself nose to fabric with thick curtains and eased them apart. Darkness. Where was he? Perhaps this was the wrong room. Hester stopped and thought. Guy would have forced the window, climbed in and then drawn the curtains to-that was when she saw the flash of light as he checked they were closed. She assumed he would then open up the light and start his search, but there was no- ‘Aargh…umph!’ Her gasp of alarm was stifled as a hand clamped over her mouth and another spun her round to pinion her tight against rough frieze cloth. ‘Lemmego!’ she mumbled. The broad, hard chest she was tight against was unmistakeably Guy’s, the scent of him was Guy, but the hard, unforgiving hands were not at all familiar in their ruthlessness.

‘Be quiet.’ The almost soundless whisper in her ear was an order. Hester nodded, as far as she was able, and was released. ‘Are you mad?’ the voice hissed.

‘No, I am not, but I think you must be,’ she hissed back. ‘What are you going to do if you are found?’

‘Run like hell-which will be a damn sight more difficult with you here, you little fool. Why are you here?’

‘To stop you.’

‘It’s a bit late now.’

‘Yes, I had noticed that.’ It was difficult to be sarcastic in a whisper. ‘Can’t you open the lantern?’

‘Wait there.’ Hester waited for what seemed like half an hour, her ears straining to follow Guy’s almost soundless progress across the room. When the dark lantern shutter was opened he was standing by the door, dropping a sofa cushion on to the floor. Then he walked back, keeping to the carpet, and motioning her into the middle of the room. Hester realised the cushions effectively blocked any glimmer of light that might escape under the door and raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you do this sort of thing often?’

Guy ignored the question, and eyed Hester critically. ‘What the devil are you wearing?’

‘Jethro’s breeches. I wasn’t about to ride about the countryside side saddle. If I fell off I’d never get back on.’

Guy’s critical gaze ran slowly down her body to her filthy knees and soaked stockings. ‘Your seat on a horse appears poor enough astride.’

‘I fell running up the driveway,’ Hester retorted furiously, fuming even more as Guy simply rolled his eyes. She kept her damaged hands carefully behind her back, unwilling to give her head for a further washing.

‘We cannot do anything about that now.’

‘I don’t want you to do anything. Nothing hurts if you don’t keep reminding me.’ They glared at each other for a moment, then Hester whispered, ‘Have you found anything yet?’

‘Hardly, I’ve been too busy dealing with you. Where was that box you saw?’

Muttering to herself, Hester tiptoed over to the chaise and knelt down, trying not to wince as her knees met the floor. Apparently they were bruised too. ‘Here, pushed right back with a lid on.’

Guy bent, picked up the chaise and moved it bodily to one side. Hester blinked, decided not to pander to male pride by showing admiration for his strength, and tried to lift the lid. ‘It’s locked.’

Somehow she was hardly surprised when Guy produced a bunch of spindly metal objects from his pocket and began to pick the lock.

‘Where did you get those?’ she hissed in his ear.

‘One of my footmen has a colourful past. Shh, I’m listening.’

The lock yielded easily. Hester could not decide whether it was beginner’s luck or long practice, but she was at Guy’s shoulder as the lid lifted, her fingers already delving into the contents. ‘Look, here’s that letter.’

Guy took it and began to read while Hester delved deeper. ‘Accounts for building the Moon House dated 1760, a journal for…’ she squinted at the faded writing in the poor light ‘…July 31, 1764. I have never felt the need to write before but now, now all my happiness and hope of support has-I cannot read this word, gone, I think-I will set it down, for to whom can I… possibly this is confide…yes, it is. Darling Allegra… No, the rest of the pages are water-stained and mildewed.’

Hester glanced at Guy, but his face was set hard and unreadable and she sensed he had erected a wall to guard his emotions. She could not ask questions, not here. Turning away, she began to dig under what seemed to be loose sheets of accounts, a page of music and reached the bottom of the box.

‘There is nothing more. No, wait.’ Her fingers touched a chain and; pulling it, revealed a locket. It flicked open under the pressure of a fingernail and there, smiling up in the flickering light of the lantern, was the blonde lady from the slashed portrait on one side and on the other a small child, hardly two, all unformed chubby cheeks, a mop of blonde curls and eyes of blue which blazed from the tiny portrait as intensely as those of the man who lifted it slowly from Hester’s lax fingers.

‘This goes with me.’ His voice was still a whisper, but Hester’s breath caught at the emotion in those few husky words.

‘What about the letter?’

‘That can go back. It is no wonder they thought there was something of great worth within the walls of the Moon House. It is full of references to treasure, something valued, precious, to be kept safe and protected.’

Hester reached out and took the paper from his hand, letting her own fingertips brush across his in a silent caress. ‘Do you know it all now?’ she whispered and received a nod in return.

A twist of the picklocks and the box was shut. Hester pushed it back carefully until it fitted its old mark on the carpet, then helped Guy position the chaise so it too fitted into the dents its feet had left. She held the lantern barely open while he retrieved the cushions, then let herself be swung down into the flowerbed while he followed her, closing the window soundlessly behind.

It seemed they were safe.

Guy clenched his teeth firmly shut and drew along, steadying breath of freezing air in through his nose. His head was spinning with tension, concentration, fury with Hester and churning emotion over the discoveries in that box.

First things first, he told himself, keeping one hand firmly on Hester’s shoulder and guiding her towards the low wall. ‘Go along the wall.’

‘I know,’ she snapped back, low voiced. ‘How do you think I got here?’

‘By broomstick,’ Guy muttered and was almost caught off balance as she swung round furiously to face him.

‘That was unkind, unjustified-’

‘Look out!’ Guy seized Hester as she swayed on the wall and the terrace was suddenly lit by a flood of light from the central room facing on to it. This was more than one candle: someone had lit every light in the room and then thrown the curtains back.

Caught like an actor in the stage lights Guy froze, Hester clasped in his arms, and looked at the scene within. Lewis was standing with his back to the window, having obviously just flung back the curtains, his sister, untying the ribbons of her bonnet, was walking towards him. At any moment they would look out on to the terrace and see the figures on the wall, petrified like two statues.

‘Run!’ he urged and Hester did, straight as an arrow, surefooted on the narrow wall, unhesitating until she got to the end where she caught hold of a branch and swung herself quietly down on to the betraying gravel. Despite his anger with her Guy felt a wave of pride wash through him. Foolish and stubborn she might be, but Hester had courage and quick wits, which filled him with admiration.

Not, he thought grimly as he took her arm and marched her unceremoniously around the house and down the drive, not that l am going to hesitate for one moment in turning her over my knee and tanning her backside just as soon as we are somewhere safe.

To be afraid on his own behalf had not occurred to him; one assessed the risks, took precautions, had a strategy for escape if necessary. But to find the woman he loved careering around in the darkness, plunging herself into danger in a house occupied by people whom she knew to wish her no good-that had shaken him.

And Guy Westrope was not accustomed to being shaken, decidedly unused to people flouting his wishes and, most of all, a complete stranger to having his mind and will taken over by a brown-haired chit of a girl with golden flecks in her eyes.

They turned out on to the road and he unshuttered the ‘glim’, as Stuttle, the third footman, called it. The small crowbar-or ‘bess’, according to Stuttle-was wedged uncomfortably in the waistband of his trousers. It had proved extremely effective; Guy resolved to slip the man a half- sovereign. Besides rewarding him for his assistance, it would do no harm to keep him loyal. Men with Stuttle’s skills were better on the inside than on the outside with a ‘bess’ in their hands.

The grim smile this thought provoked must have lingered on his lips, for as soon as they reached the barn and Hester tugged her arm free of his grip, she demanded, ‘And what is so amusing?’