Captain Langthorne's Proposal

‘Of course,’ he agreed, with a smug smile that was enough to try the most patient of saints as they approached Burgesses’ rather perfunctory front garden at last, and Serena was forced to swallow a less than polite reply.

‘Oh, my lady and Sir Adam—what a pleasure to see you both,’ Mrs Burgess declared rather breathlessly as she bustled out of the front door.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Burgess, and how are you today?’

‘None too stout, I fear, Lady Summerton.’ The worthy lady faltered, and Serena sent Sir Adam a reproving look when she saw his broad shoulders shake—for Mrs Burgess was very far from slender after her many pregnancies.

‘I’m very sorry to hear it. Perhaps we could all take a glass of your delicious cowslip wine while you tell us all about it, Mrs Burgess?’ said Serena.

Which would serve him right, she decided. The idea of Sir Adam Langthorne choking down this good lady’s home-made wine when he was reputed to have the finest cellar in the county made her long to laugh out loud.

‘None of that potent brew for me thank you, ma’am, I need to keep a clear head for whatever business your husband has with me,’ he informed their hostess with an engaging smile—the slippery rogue. ‘But there’s no reason you and her ladyship can’t have a comfortable coze before I see her home.’

‘I can find my own way, thank you, Sir Adam.’

‘Normally I’m sure you would, Lady Summerton, but after indulging in Mrs Burgess’s famous cowslip you might go astray. We can’t have her ladyship spending the night in a ditch, can we, Mrs Burgess?’

Serena might have been tempted to argue for the ditch if her hostess’s eager ears had not been taking in every word. Instead she sent Sir Adam a pallid smile that promised revenge, and allowed herself to be led into the parlour and fed plum cake and gossip while she cautiously sampled her wine. It really was quite pleasant, she decided, and she was thirsty. But when Mrs Burgess would have topped up her glass she managed to refuse.

‘I have no wish to become tipsy and prove Sir Adam right—delicious as this is, Mrs Burgess,’ she excused herself, and sipped gratefully at the cup of tea she was offered instead. ‘Now, tell me all about this ghost the sexton saw the other night. It sounds a most unlikely tale to me, and I can’t help but wonder if he hadn’t been at your excellent wine.’

‘I wouldn’t waste it on the likes of him,’ Mrs Burgess declared with a disgusted sniff. ‘That ne’er do well would drink the dregs out of the chalice of a Sunday if he could get hold of them. The drink has got to him well and truly at long last, and I dare say he’ll be found laid in one of his own graves one morning, stone-dead. I’ll believe in that there ghost when I set eyes on it and not before, my lady.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it, as all sorts of wild tales are doing the rounds. A voice against it is most welcome.’

If rather surprising, Serena added in her head. Mrs Burgess usually believed every wild rumour that went around, and added a few embellishments before passing them on. She had several times told Serena that the French were stealing Burgess’s turnips and the eggs from her hen-house, despite the fact that Red Bridge Farm was seventy miles from the sea.

‘And that daft besom he’s married to has spread tales as would make your hair curl,’ Mrs Burgess went on indignantly.

‘Has she indeed?’

‘Said this ghost of his rose up out of the Canderton vault and that Lady Canderton was walking, she did, my lady. I told her sharpish that my old mistress was as respectable a woman as ever walked God’s good earth. She would no more come back to haunt us than the King himself would—if he was dead, of course, which he ain’t. Might just as well be, the poor mad soul, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m not having that baggage putting it about that my poor late lady’s unquiet in her grave, for she was as decent a woman as you could find in the whole of England.’

Serena vaguely remembered hearing Mrs Burgess had been in service before she’d wed. The family had died out with Sir William Canderton’s death twenty years before, just a few months after his formidable mother went to her own eternal rest. The land had been sold off to pay wild Sir William’s debts, and the ancient house demolished as a danger to anyone rash enough to venture inside its rotten shell.

Mrs Burgess was probably the only one who cared if the Candertons were at peace or not, and that seemed rather sad. Serena set herself to soothe her with such a liberal helping of sympathy and flattery that by the time Sir Adam reappeared her head was reeling with our Liza’s hives, the shocking price Mrs Burgess’s remaining eggs had fetched at market, and the French spies who were ruining the country from within.

‘You should have kept on with the wine,’ her escort informed her unsympathetically when they finally got away from the voluble farmer’s wife. ‘No doubt the infernal woman talked you into a headache anyway. More alcohol might have blurred her confounded rigmarole.’

‘I doubt I could keep sufficient guard on my tongue.’

‘There’s that, of course, but once she’s in full flow I doubt she hears what anyone else has to say.’

‘Probably not. But she was in a rare state over the rumour Wharton is putting about. I’ve never heard her as voluble as she was today.’

‘Whereas Burgess is as close mouthed as she is loose-tongued—which may explain why they go on so well together. He’s the ideal audience, and she saves him the effort of thinking of aught to say.’

‘So far as I can tell Mrs Burgess is upset that the sexton said he saw a ghost coming from the vault where her late mistress is laid. She takes offence that so virtuous and generous a mistress should be thought to trouble the living instead of staying respectably dead.’

‘I hope time will deal so well with my reputation after I’m gone, then. Lady Canderton was a complete tartar. They had the pew behind ours in church, and she used to clip me round the ear whenever she felt I wasn’t paying enough attention to the sermon. She once got me a fine beating for stealing cherries out of her kitchen garden as well.’

‘Deserved, I suspect,’ she said unsympathetically.

‘Rachel was the culprit. But maybe Lady Canderton thought I should take her punishment as I shared her booty.’

‘None of which gives reason for her ghost to walk. Indeed, it sounds like a mare’s nest to me, and I dare say Mrs Burgess is right.’

‘That seems unlikely. But about what?’

‘The sexton is addicted to the bottle—and not her cowslip wine neither, “for he ain’t worthy to so much as taste it.”’

‘Are you sure you didn’t have too much yourself?’ he asked, grinning at her imitation of the voluble woman.

‘Not nearly enough, I assure you, Sir Adam. Now our ways must diverge, as I need to see Janet Partridge and I doubt she wants to see a gentleman when she’s so near her time.’

‘I dare say you’re right, but I’ll escort you to her door nonetheless. Gadding about the countryside alone with all those light-fingered Frenchmen and restless ghosts running about is pure folly, my lady.’

Sensing a serious note under his teasing, she wondered fleetingly what it might feel like to be ruthlessly bullied for her own good by Sir Adam Langthorne for the rest of her life. She had undoubtedly drunk too much of that wine after all, because it seemed a seductively attractive notion—and that would never do.

‘I doubt if either are bold enough to venture abroad in daylight, and I have no wish to visit the churchyard or Hangar Woods during the hours of darkness, I assure you.’

‘You have no taste for the gothic, my lady?’

‘None whatsoever—which shows a sad want of sensibility I dare say. Indeed, I can imagine nothing more horrid than coming across a headless spectre or a restless spirit while I’m busily minding my own business and harming nobody.’

‘I suspect one or two of them might like to come across such an appealing quarry as yourself, though. But it’s my belief Wharton is hiding something in that churchyard and means to frighten everyone away from it—especially after dark.’

‘So you intend to go there just to confound him?’ she asked sharply.

‘Maybe I’m foolish enough to wonder what a supernatural encounter might be like,’ he admitted laconically. Why did she think he was serious about this odd business? Surely there weren’t really French spies running about rural Herefordshire for want of something better to do?

‘Trust a man to be curious,’ she accused, knowing she had no right to protest his determination to run headlong into the first danger that presented itself because he might be bored after his adventures in Spain.

‘And trust a woman to know best,’ he parried infuriatingly.

‘Not two minutes ago you were warning me to be careful, and it’s commonly held to be the other way about.’

‘Have you never wanted to break out of the role you were allotted in life, Lady Summerton?’

‘Frequently. But then I grew up.’

‘Ah, so that explains it! Women grow up and men just learn to hide their curiosity a little better.’

‘Or we pique your curiosity, so you satisfy it at no cost to ourselves.’

‘Then you want to know about the ghost after all?’

‘No, but I should like to know just what Wharton is hiding in that vault.’