Captain Harraway had given Jacob a glowing recommendation to match the one for Kat given by Miss Ellen, and the vicar took their names and their entirely fictional birth dates—for neither she nor Jacob had the least idea of the actual day they had been born, and in Jacob’s case, even the year was a guess.
Waterford was a worry, but Kat was confident that Jacob and Captain Harraway were more than a match for the man. Meanwhile, her heart was singing.
Waterford had escapedagain. Gone to ground, the captain said, and Jake was sure he was right. The sneak attack on Jake was an escalation that could not be ignored, and when they lostWaterford’s trail, they took the evidence they had found to the magistrate.
He was sympathetic but not inclined to do anything. “After all,” he said. “No one was hurt. It might have just been an attempt to frighten.”
“With a loaded gun?” Captain Harraway asked.
“Yes, very foolish,” the magistrate said. “I shall have some harsh words with him if he returns to Ealing. But I imagine he took fright at the results of his stupid actions and is now far away.”
And whatever they said, the magistrate could not bring himself to believe that “an officer and a gentleman” could make an unprovoked attack on a servant.
“May I have one of your pistols to carry, Captain?” Jake asked as they rode away from the magistrate’s manor house. “I think we should both be armed whenever we leave the house until Waterford is found.”
“I agree,” said the captain. He had a new set of flintlocks that he’d purchased a couple of months ago—a pair that held two shots each, and that were easy to load with specially prepared ammunition. They stopped by the inn to collect them, and Jake and the captain spent an hour that evening wrapping bullets and charges of powder in paper.
That night, the captain took the first shift to guard Carr Abbas, and Jake relieved him at three in the morning. Nothing disturbed the night, though, and Kat joined him as the sun rose, to stroll around the house with him as he continued to check for anything unusual or out of place.
“I am changing back into skirts today,” Kat told Jake. “I shall miss the freedom of men’s clothes, but there’s something pleasing about the swing of a skirt.”
“You can say that again,” Jake told her. “I won’t mind, either, when I’m the only man who gets to admire that shape of your bottom.”
“Jake!” She protested, but she was laughing at the same time.
“You are such a pretty woman, Kat,” he said. “How on earth people haven’t seen you for a woman all the way through, I do not know.”
“People see what they expect to see,” she replied. “You told me that, many years ago, and I’ve always found it to be true. No one would have questioned us, you know, if Captain Harraway had not happened to be the true owner of Carr Abbas.”
“Quite a coincidence,” Jake said.
“I’d like to think it was meant to be, but I can’t help but wonder. Mrs. Dove-Lyon knew that Miss Ellen was not truly the Lady of Carr Abbas. Might she also have known that Captain Harraway was the owner?”
“Probably,” he agreed. In fact, almost certainly. According to Skippy, she had extensive files on each of the regulars at the Lyon’s Den. He chuckled. “How that must have amused her—to make a marriage between the true lord of Carr Abbas and the false lady.”
“It will be a good marriage, will it not? Miss Ellen deserves a good husband.”
“The captain will care for her, protect her, and cherish her,” Jake assured his darling. Would it work to suggest he wanted to care for, protect, and cherish Kat? She’d probably hand him his head.
“That will suit her,” said Kat. “In her whole life, no one has ever thought about her first or looked after her needs before their own.”
“You have, Kat,” Jake pointed out. “You have been putting her first since before I met you.”
Kat shrugged. “That’s different. She was the first person to ever be kind to me. Of course, I look out for her. Just as you look out for your captain.”
Jake nodded in acknowledgement. “We were lucky to fall in with them, were we not? Now we just need to get them married, and then marry ourselves, and look out for them for the restof our days.”
Kat expected hertransformation into a woman to be even more of a shock to the household than the discovery that the wandering artist was the real owner of Carr Abbas, and the betrothed of their lady.
She changed in Miss Ellen’s room and came down to the kitchen to fetch the morning tray, and for a moment, everyone simply stared. Then Jacob, who was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee, said, “Good morning, Miss Fivepence,” and there was an uproar—a dozen voices all asking questions at once, each louder than the one before to be heard over the din.
“Quiet!” Mrs. Kirby, who never had to raise her voice, made an exception in this case, and the servants reacted with instant silence. “Miss Fivepence has been pretending to be a man in order to give better protection to her mistress,” Mrs. Kirby announced. “Now that our lady’s wedding is imminent, she has resumed her usual attire. Now be off about your work, all of you. Cook, is the lady’s tray ready?”
The servants scattered to their work, but with glances toward Kat that hinted at more questions and comments when they had the opportunity. Not that Kat intended to add more to Mrs. Kirby’s explanation—Captain Harraway’s really. It sufficed, and was nearly the truth.
“I thought you would be back at the inn,” she said to Jake. “Won’t the captain be expecting you now the sun is up?”
“I wanted to see you, first, Kat,” Jacob replied. “This is the first time I’ve seen you in skirts since you were a girl of fourteen.”
