“I’ve asked Fletch to take you and the children home in the carriage. Since Brydie and I stay in town, we don’t need it. He’ll be staying over at the Hall for a while. Jacques is hearing ghosts.” Damien dropped that bit of news, then returned to his office before anyone could raise an objection.
“Ghosts?” Kate asked weakly, drying the dishes Brydie washed. The Hall was Damien’s childhood home, just across the road from her property.
Brydie frowned at the door between the kitchen and the front room. “No notion. The Hall is haunted, right enough. Damien despises it. But I thought Jacques was sleeping above the workshop.”
Jacques acted as Damien’s valet, when needed, but he was a trained bootmaker, and Sutter Hall had a shoe workshop.
“I don’t know how he can hope to sell anything out there. He needs a shop in the village, although I still can’t think there’s enough gentlemen wanting fitted boots to keep him in business.” Dishes dried, Kate began bundling Lynly into her coat.
“He’s learning to make unfitted ones, plus women’s shoes. Damien and I have been teaching him what we know, and he’s pretty good at learning. Once people know he does good work, perhaps they’ll order the fitted ones. Damien’s father did well as a shoemaker here.”
“Only because Mrs. Sutter pinched pennies and brilliantly invested his inheritance,” Kate said in scorn. “I doubt the old letch earned enough to put food on the table.”
Kate had earned the right to scorn Damien’s father. She tried never to think of him, but every time she looked at her eldest son, she had to remember the man who had forced himself on her and given her a child she hadn’t wanted. Married life hadn’t eased the shock, disgust, or loathing.
Her husband had been a quiet, unassuming man of a class well below hers. He’d bowed to her wishes and taught her not to fear him, but the anxiety was always there, gnawing.
Riding in a half-closed carriage with Major Fletcher would not bring her comfort.
But as she had for years, Kate suppressed her fear and did as expected, marching out to the waiting barouche. The drive was only a couple of miles. They usually took a pony cart. But for Lynly, who had never been healthy, Kate would accept the faster, warmer carriage. Rob bounced in glee at the chance to sit on the front bench behind the horses.
“Thank you, Major,” Kate said through clenched teeth when he assisted her inside. She was shivering but not from cold.
“No difficulty. These nags need more exercise.” He didn’t discuss Jacques and ghosts or anything more, just checked to see they were settled and silently set the horses on their way.
His uncommunicativeness was almost a blessing. Weary and unhappy, Kate didn’t attempt to do more than listen to the children.
The carriage covered the distance far more swiftly than the pony, arriving only a little after sunset. Relieved, Kate glanced out to see if Fletch was dropping them off in front or back. With no one home, the house should have been dark. Instead, a lantern burned in the front room. What. . . ?
Unaware of the peculiarity, Fletch drove the carriage through the front gates to drop them off on the circular gravel drive. Her home was a substantial stone farm house, built a century ago and added onto since. The windows were all the same size and spaced equally. No one had been here to close the shutters, so the light was quite visible.
Just as Rob cried, “There’s someone inside!” a sturdy figure stepped from the arched front entrance.
“Thee keep going, mind,” a deep voice with a thick accent commanded. “Place ain’t yerz no more. You bist tryin’ my patience eno’. Go back to thy sister, where thee belongs.”
Stunned, Kate didn’t know how to respond. She wasn’t Brydie. Fury was never her first reaction.
Fletch wasn’t so indecisive. “Rob, get down on the floor. Kate, you and Lynly sit back under the hood as far as you can.”
Startled that he even knew the names of her children, Kate reflexively followed orders and pushed Lynly behind her, covering her in the carriage blanket. She recognized that accent now but didn’t have time to react before Fletch simply launched himself, like a mighty panther, at the man stepping into the drive.
The men hit the ground in an incomprehensible thudding of blows. When no shots were fired, Kate peered from beneath the blanket and gasped. Busy attempting to annihilate each other, the combatants were rolling downhill. “The fence!” she shouted. “It’s rotten.”
Too late, the brawling pair crashed into the picket fence only meant to keep children from falling into what her mother had laughingly called the ha-ha. The blow of their combined weight took out an ancient post. The rotted planks cracked, and the combatants rolled off the stone retaining wall to hit the frozen ground below.
Hearing a groan but still no gunshots, Kate frantically scrambled from the carriage to see what damage the madmen had done to themselves.
The horses whinnied restlessly with no hands on the reins. Before she could order Rob to hold them, the intruder jumped up, holding his arm, and fled toward the woods.
Leaving Fletch sprawled on the ground, groaning and cursing.
Five
Fletch
Fletch bit his tongue on a groan as Dr. Walker pulled the linen tight over his shoulder, upper arm, and around his ribs, then formed a sling. For modesty’s sake, he still wore his wrinkled shirt.
He’d been injured before. He wouldn’t die of pain. But he might kill someone in frustration.
