Betrayed Countess (Books We Love Historical Romance) Page 5

  “That is why we were ‘asked’ to leave the coach.” Bettina reined in the horse, who immediately dropped its head to crop the sparse grass. “If you wish it, then you go down solitaire and I will wait here.”

  Hearing a shout, Bettina looked across the rocky slope. A man tramped toward them from the group below. “Say, you girls all alone out here?” He smiled with fat lips nestled like worms in a scraggly beard.

  “We’re headed down to Sidwell,” Kerra said, looking him over.

  Bettina glared at her companion, her hand twisting the horse’s reins. She took in the man’s blue drill coat and trousers, damp and tinged with what looked like black powder.

  “Can’t be too sure of bein’ safe all by yourselves. Ride down and rest a bit.”

  “What might be in it for us?” Kerra made a sultry laugh, her neck stretching like a cat about to receive a saucer of milk.

  “Kerra, we must continue our travels,” Bettina said through tight lips. She jerked the horse’s head up from his grazing, and he snorted in protest.

  “A froggie she be? But she ain’t so friendly, if she’s pretty enough,” the man smirked and picked at his teeth. “We has whiskey to share. Come sit for a chat.”

  “I wouldn’t mind….” Kerra broke off when Bettina nudged her with a sharp elbow.

  “Leave us alone. We will have none of this ‘chat’.” Bettina figured it was some vulgar English alcohol.

  “Running scared from your country, aye? Now I’m getting a mite riled, you bein’ such a killjoy.” The man’s fleshy smile changed to a sneer. He stepped closer. “You should be a bit more sweet to me.”

  Another miner strolled up the slope toward them. They smelled like earth and smoke.

  Bettina kicked the horse’s flanks, forcing Kerra to grab her shoulders. The horse galloped off down the road. Bettina leaned into it, her thighs tight against the gelding’s heaving body.

  “Oh, bother with you, then!” The miner’s laugh followed after them.

  “They wouldn’t o’ done much, but a friendly drink.” Kerra gasped, clinging to her with her skinny arms as they jostled. “All right. Slow down.”

  “I will not be invited to sit with men I do not know. Or do not care to know.” Bettina pulled back on the reins, yet urged the horse along the road until Hawthorne trees blocked them from the miners’ sight. She was anxious to keep a semblance of decency in a life that had lost its composition—an unraveling tapestry.

  “Now don’t get your back up, Mamsell. You’ve some airs for one boldly traipsing the world on her own. But if you don’t want to, I won’t ask again.” Kerra stopped squirming and slumped behind her. “Must o’ lived some high life where you come from.”

  “My back is not up, and there is nothing high about my life.” Not anymore, Bettina thought with a heavy sigh. The horse stepped over a dirty stream and a scattering of fragrant meadowsweet with creamy white flowers. Bettina kept glancing over her shoulder. She let out a strained breath. “Ma foi, it is as you said, you do what you have to.”

  * * * *

  The Atlantic surged in gray anger on the western coast the next afternoon, waves bashing against jagged cliffs. Bettina dismounted to rest the horse. The sea spray dampened her cheeks, and she tasted salt in a breeze that ruffled her silk skirt around her legs and slapped at her straw hat. “So I have crossed England … and I am that much farther from France.” She stared down the sharp cliffs and had the cutting feeling she should gallop back in the other direction—except the poor horse might not live that long.

  “We still has a few days to go down the coast,” Kerra grimaced and kicked at the dirt. Bettina saw she was mistaken that her companion had stopped sulking over her missed opportunity for alcohol.

  Riding southwest, they passed splintered slate cliffs and contrasting green hills, like broken pewter ware against jade cloth. Remnants of ancient castles and stonewalls clung to the landscape. Cream-colored sheep grazed peacefully on the slopes. Gulls screeched overhead, as they swept their long winged bodies out to sea. Bettina breathed it all in, trying not to dwell on her precarious future.

  When night closed in, Kerra pointed out a circle of stones off the road. “Let’s make camp there, among them dancing maidens.”

  “What are dancing maidens?” Bettina asked when the fire crackled and they’d eaten their supper. The upright stones cast long shadows over the scrubby grass. The wind twisted at her hair and she nestled in her shawl.

  “Cornish lore. Any standing stones is maidens frozen in place for dancing on Sunday. God don’t like that, so he punished ’em.” Kerra snorted and tossed a twig into the fire.

  “Perhaps you can unfreeze one and ask her to bring me a hot cup of coffee,” Bettina said, and found she liked it when Kerra laughed. She snuggled closer to the flames and appreciated that with Kerra’s company she felt a part of something instead of abandoned. “You speak of your sister. Where are your parents?” She wanted to banish any thoughts of her own, and soothe the other woman’s injured pride.

  “Well, Mamm died when I be born. Guess that made Father sad and fulla spite. ’Course he was one to wander … couldn’t bear to look at us too much. Always searching for a game, Maddie says. Never gave us much money, ’cause he drunk it all. Then he took off for good, not once sending us nothing. But we got by.” Kerra laughed louder, a sound that seemed to swirl the stars poking out above. “Better off without him, most likely.”

  “When this happened, it did not make you upset or angry?” Bettina asked in a reflective voice, tossing another stick on a fire that wriggled in the wind and flickered over the chastised dancers. She listened to every sound around her, praying that no one lurked out there in the dark to take advantage of two unprotected women. The ocean, several yards away, continued to batter the cliffs. The trees, in abundance at the start of their journey, now seemed sparse on this rugged, windswept shore. She shivered, as if the wind could scour through her skin.

  “Sometimes. But why waste time on that? Only chews up your innards, not the one you be mad at.” Kerra lay back on the blanket, her arms behind her head. An owl hooted in the distance. “Mighta been huffed for being dumped from the coach, but not to let it fester for long.”

  Bettina warmed to Kerra’s blunt, if erratic, manner. She admired her resilience, and, to a point, her defying of convention. Suddenly she understood her new friend’s—were they friends?—wild nature as nurtured by this region. Bettina stretched her neck and shoulders, her muscles unknotting, and smiled for the first time in days. She had to allow a similar resilience to soak into her like the bath oils she craved.

  The mist cleared by mid-morning of the following day. Bettina stiffened when Kerra jabbed her in the back. The saddle creaked with her fidgeting. “Fie, we be as good as there now. Down there, take that road to the right.”

  Bettina steered the horse onto a smaller track that veered close to the cliffs. As they rounded a bend on the left at the base of a hill, a two-storied whitewashed stone building slid into view. Under a slate roof, six small windows with diamond-shaped panes winked in the sun. A weathered sign out front read Maddie’s Ace as it squeaked on rusted chains. Above the large black letters, a simple painting of a dark-haired woman holding the Ace of Spades stared out.

  Past the inn, the road sloped to a humble village of granite, clob and slate cottages, hugging the hill on one side and the sea cliffs on the other.

  “Here’s my old Sidwell.” Kerra slid off the horse with a thump and ran inside the building. “Mads, I’m home! Now don’t get uppity about where I been.”

  Bettina dismounted near the inn’s front door and scrutinized the modest village—a drab comparison to Bath. Up on the hill, directly behind the inn, sat a mansion half obscured by trees. At the hill’s foot, two birds Kerra called curlews probed a clump of bracken with their sickle beaks. Bettina rubbed her sore back and wished like Kerra she could cry ‘I’m home’.

  “Come inside.” Kerra poked her head out the door, her cheeks flus
hed.

  Bettina entered into a spacious room with a huge stone fireplace, the smell of smoke and roasted meat assaulting her. Wooden tables with worn benches and chairs were scattered over a timber floor stained dark brown. Along the wall to the right stood a line of barrels with planks across them like a platform. Several casks with spigots sat atop the planks. Spirits in bottles of amber and green lined the shelves of an old cupboard to the right. Pewter tankards hung from pegs on rough-hewn beams that bowed under a low ceiling. The room looked rustic but orderly. Bettina relaxed at the clean underlying scent of vinegar.

  A woman stalked toward them. She had the same coloring as Kerra, but a fuller figure with none of her sister’s sharp edges. In the softer features of this taller woman lay the beauty Kerra’s visage only hinted at. Though no delicate bloom, her face showed years of hard work.

  “I'm Maddie Tregons,” she said, thrusting out her hand.

  “Bettina Laurant, my pleasure to meet you, Madame.” Bettina let her arm be pumped by a grip worthy of a man’s.

  “Kerra says you need work. Could use the help. Two of my employees left to get married and work in Plymouth. Gifford and Caroline … aye, Kerra, they finally done it. Can’t pay much, but you can stay in one of the rooms in back and eat with us. If you got gumption, there be plenty round here to keep busy. I’ll give it a week or so an’ hope you work out.”

  “Merci.” Bettina flashed what she hoped was her best smile, unsure if she had ‘gumption’ or not. She prayed it wasn’t contagious. She glanced around again, stomach queasy, and considered, in her distress over the Littles, she’d been hasty to travel to Cornwall.

  Chapter Five

  Bettina reassessed the value of sidesaddles as she limped back out with Kerra to retrieve the horse. The animal resembled gray bones, withered on hooves; foam dripped from his mouth. She stroked his velvet nose. “Kerra, where do we keep our cheval? He needs food.”

  “Is that what you named him, Shevall? A bit peculiar, ain’t it?” Kerra snorted, her hands on her skinny waist. “You French has a strange language.”

  “Not exactly. It means—”

  “I’ll show you where to put Shevall. Come on around.” Kerra led her to a small stable behind the inn. A rusty pump with a wooden bucket hanging from it divided the yard between the inn’s rear door and a ramshackle stable. A fringe of hawthorn trees directly behind the stable marked the beginning of the hill’s incline.

  Bettina stared up at the mansion that dominated its summit. “What is that château?” She saw Kerra scrunch up her face. “The house up on this hill?”

  Kerra’s round eyes glowed. The stable door, half open in her grasp, clunked shut. “Oh, now that’s Bronnmargh, the Camborne manor. Don't too many go up there. They say Mr. Camborne murdered his own wife sometime back. Choked an’ buried her—she ain’t been found yet. Quite the scandal it be. But he wouldn’t admit to none of it, o’ course.”

  A chill rippled through Bettina when she glanced again up the slope. She rubbed her aching neck and found herself too weary for lurid gossip. Her legs shivered beneath her, calves rubbed raw from riding. She let the matter drop, to Kerra’s obvious dismay, and pulled open the stable door. Coughing in the dust-strewn air, she unsaddled the horse, haplessly christened Shevall.

  “Say, brat, give this horse some hay an’ water,” Kerra said to a twig of a boy who busily mucked out a stall.

  “You back so soon? What happened?” the boy asked, a smirk on his angular face.

  “Never you mind.” Kerra stuck out her tongue, then turned to Bettina. “This be Morley. Morley, this is Mamsell Laurant. You treat her nice.”

  The two women re-entered the inn through the back door, and Maddie directed Bettina to a tiny, windowless room off the kitchen. The narrow bed, rickety washstand and two pegs on the wall did little to cheer her up. Although a warm, dry place for her brief habitation, it looked more a deserted pantry than a bedchamber.

  Bettina sat on the straw mattress, kicked off her slippers and rubbed her feet. She dropped her head in her hands and assured herself this position was temporary. She’d earn enough money, find a way to contact her mother, and together they’d establish a new life somewhere, if returning to France proved too dangerous.

  Unable to resist, she pulled up her legs and laid her head on the pillow.

  “Roust up, Maddie wants you in the kitchen.”

  Bettina blinked as Kerra shook her. She groaned and crawled from the bed’s brief comfort. Patting down the wrinkles in her dress, she stuffed her feet in her slippers and stumbled out the door.

  “You can help in here,” Maddie said, tone officious. “Ann’s our cook and kitchen worker, she’ll show you what to do. When you be done, you can sweep the floors, strip the beds upstairs, then boil the laundry that’s piled here by the door.”

  “All of that is needed to be finished today?” Bettina rubbed her face.

  “You come to work, didn’t you?” A flicker of impatience crossed Maddie’s face. “There be a lot more than that. Oh, and a lodger vomited on the rug in number two. You’ll need to scrub it with some vinegar. Best tie up that mop o’ hair. Ann, find her a cap or scarf.”

  With a grim smile, Maddie deposited her with a tall, older woman whose long face scowled in disapproval. Ann shoved a bowl of potatoes and a knife into her hands. “Start peeling, girl. Then you can chop them onions over there.” She dug around in a cupboard and tossed her apprentice a frayed cap.

  Bettina inspected the cap for vermin before she tugged it on and looked around the cramped kitchen. Three ancient iron pots ant two saucepans hung on a lug pole in the wide stone fireplace. A bent skimmer hung on a hook to the right of the hearth, along with other odd-looking utensils. A broken churn sat in a corner. In a splintered cupboard were several chipped earthenware pots and wooden trenchers. From what she remembered of her brief visits to the kitchens, this seemed a sparse comparison to her Paris home and country château.

  Bettina held the knife to the spud’s brown skin. When she tried to shave it, the knife slipped and clattered on the floor, the potato tumbling after. She snatched it back up and started as she turned to see Ann glaring down at her.

  “Here now, that ain’t no way to peel,” Ann groused. “Give it to me. You never done kitchen work afore, I see. Gonna have fingers skinned in the bowl ’stead of potatoes. Don’t just stand there, stoke the fire, if you can manage that.”

  Bettina stared around the kitchen again. “Where is the wood, please?”

  “Where did you work afore here, Duchess?” Ann bared her snaggled teeth attached to red gums. “Can’t risk the price of wood, nor any coal. We use turf and furze like most people round here does.”

  “I do not understand. What is that, ‘turf’ and ‘furze’?” Bettina tried to conceal her annoyance at the woman’s attitude.

  “The soil and shrubbery, o’ course.” Ann flipped the lappet of her mobcap. “Any fool knows that.”

  “You burn dirt and plants? That sounds the foolish way.” Bettina glanced at the fireplace, suspicious that the woman taunted her inexperience.

  “Ain’t got time for your whining. A village boy brings the fuel once a week. If you see him, have him put it in the ookener. That’s the wood corner. Meanwhile there be plenty to tide us over. Get to it.” Ann jabbed her long finger toward a wooden box in the far corner of the kitchen, then sighed in disgust. “What has the good Lord brought me to suffer now?”

  Bettina dug her hands into the packed dirt slices and grimaced. “I might say the same, Madame.”

  * * * *

  Slumped at the kitchen table after another endless day, Bettina lamented the floors and linens left to scrub. Her head swam with exhaustion. She sipped a cup of weak tea and tried to nibble at the hard-textured bread laid out for her dinner. Baked in the hot ashes of the brick oven to the left of the kitchen fireplace, this cheap substitute for white bread made from barley was called black bread. The tasteless boiled mutton on the scarred wooden trencher beside
the bread turned her stomach. She tried to conger the aroma of delicate fish and veal served in delicious sauces that once awaited her on her mother’s elegant porcelain.

  Flexing her hands, she inspected the cuts and burns on her fingers—badges of dishonor from four days of ineptitude in the kitchen. She ran her fingertips down her dress, over the ribs she’d never felt so sharp beneath her skin before. Unable to choke down the food, Bettina rose and walked into the taproom where Maddie served drinks to a few customers. “Madame Maddie, do you have a cream for my hands?”

  “Just call me Maddie, nothin’ fancy.” The woman walked toward her. She grasped Bettina’s hand, brushed a thumb over her skin and frowned. “You’re hands be too soft when you come, child. Rub hog’s lard on them. I might have some sweet oil I can mix in too.”

  “The grease of a pig, that is good?” Bettina didn’t relish that smell.

  “Aye. I figure next month you can help Kerra and Dory, my other girl, serve out here. This was two crowded gloomy rooms. I opened it up to one, so I can oversee everything. Took over Gifford’s duty of mixin’ drinks. Brung most of the casks out here—does away with much running back and forth, makes it easier. An’ don’t have to pay potboys.” Maddie squeezed her shoulder. “You best head upstairs to strip the bed in three.”

  “I will do that.” Bettina forced a smile and dragged herself up the stairs, determined to complete her tasks. Four men grumbled and scratched their way out of room number three, leaving their body stench behind. She wrinkled her nose and pulled off the sheets. Kerra came in with a basket of dirty linen from another room.

  “How can these people stand to be so crowded up in the beds?” Bettina asked, thinking of the odious group that just plodded out.

  “All inns house their guests that way.” Kerra rolled her eyes. “Maybe you French manage inns different. But here only the rich can afford a bed to themselves. Now don’t forget to empty them chamber pots.” Kerra stuffed the bedding into her basket and strode out.