Chapter Nine
Morvoren
The journey seemed to take forever. The mail coach, a much smarter vehicle than the one that had transported them to Exeter, bowled along the bumpiest roads in England at what felt like breakneck speed, but was really only a snail's pace when compared with a car. It rattled and banged and jolted Morvoren about so much, she couldn't sleep. She kept her eyes closed as much as possible, but every time she managed to nod off, the coach hit a sizeable rut, and a sudden lurch would bang her head against the side and wake her up. This must be why coach interiors were kitted out like padded cells.
Her sleepless situation was not helped by the fact that the guard blew his post horn very loudly as he approached each tollgate, every time making her start in alarm.
"That's so they can have the tollgates open," Kit explained when she threw him a shocked look the first time it happened. "The mail coach gets free passage through all the tollgates."
The fourth time the coach halted for a change of horses, another passenger arrived to join them.
He was waiting outside the inn when the coach arrived, dressed in a rather stylish long cape and with a smart top hat set at a jaunty angle on a head of carefully arranged chestnut curls. In one hand he held a silver handled walking stick, and in the other a pair of immaculate pale gloves.
As Kit helped Morvoren down from the coach to stretch her legs, he turned to greet them, a smile of studied charm on a face that would have been classically handsome had it not been for his thin lips. Heavily lidded eyes favored Kit with only a slight flicker of greeting before they fixed on Morvoren, cold appraisal emanating from them.
Heat flared on her cheeks. The stranger's gimlet gaze made her want to drape a cloak about herself, only she didn't have one. All she could do was draw her shawl closer around her shoulders.
She had the distinct impression this man was taking in not just her figure but also the state of her old-fashioned clothing. After a moment that felt as though it lasted forever, he raised an exquisite eyebrow in what might have been disdain. Anger bubbling at the cheek of him, Morvoren edged sideways, closer to the comforting safety Loveday represented.
Kit's whole body had stiffened, his hands forming fists by his sides.
"Well," drawled the newcomer in a deep voice. "If it isn't young Kit. Fancy coming upon you here."
"Fitzwilliam," Kit said, his own voice short and sharp. "What a surprise to meet you here, too. I didn't know you were in this part of the country."
The newcomer, Fitzwilliam, smiled, a rather condescending smile Morvoren didn't like. "Why would you? I was, er… engaged in visiting a friend."
Kit frowned. "Really?" He could be as condescending as the next man, it seemed. Morvoren suppressed the urge to chuckle as the two of them faced off against one another like a pair of farmyard cockerels.
After a long pause, Fitzwilliam spoke. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your lovely travelling companion?"
From her position behind Kit, Morvoren had a view of a once more archly raised eyebrow. Why did she get the impression he was implying something improper between Kit and her? A shiver of distaste ran down her spine, making her toes curl. Hopefully, whoever this Fitzwilliam was, he wasn't a close friend of Kit's.
"Fitzwilliam," Kit said, his voice stiff with barely hidden dislike. "May I present Miss Morvoren Lucas. She's travelling to visit my mother and sister at Ormonde, and I am escorting her… and her maidservant." He paused. "She's a friend of my sister's."
Morvoren made a rather awkward curtsey, assuming that was expected of her, wobbling a little at the lowest point.
"Miss Lucas, may I present Captain Fitzwilliam Carlyon," Kit said, as she rose. "My cousin."
Captain Carlyon held out a pale hand. "Charmed."
In a fluster about what to do, Morvoren could find no excuse not to let him take her hand.
He bared his teeth in a vulpine smile. "Quite charmed."
For a far too long moment he kept hold of Morvoren's hand, and it was all she could do to prevent herself from snatching it back.
Luckily, the coach driver was growing impatient. He leaned down from his lofty position. "Are you lot gettin' on or not? I've got to go or we're goin' to be late at the next stop."
Captain Carlyon released Morvoren's hand and stood back, with another smile, to allow her into the coach in front of him.
Conscious of not wanting to trip over in front of this man, Morvoren hitched her skirts up a little and managed to climb back into the coach without showing herself up.
The captain climbed in next, shrugged off his cape, and, to Morvoren's horror, took the seat beside her. Kit handed Loveday up then climbed in himself, and the guard folded up the step and closed the doors as Kit and Loveday took the seats opposite.
As the coach rumbled out of the inn yard, Morvoren settled as far into her corner as she could, leaving as big a space as possible between herself and Captain Carlyon. Which was just as well, as, typically of the sort of man he seemed to be, he spread his legs and sprawled across the seat as though no one else were trying to occupy it. Horrible.
Without a glance at Kit, whose anger pulsed through the coach, she leaned her head on the cushioned wall and closed her eyes, shutting everything out in the hopes of some sleep. The last thing she wanted to have to do was to talk to this odious man.
*
Kit
Damn it. Thathis cousin, of all people, should be here, in the middle of nowhere and getting into the same coach as they were. And sitting next to Miss Lucas, who did not, thank goodness, look at all pleased by his decision to occupy the seat beside her. A woman of good sense.
Kit handed Loveday in and climbed in behind her. The only remaining seat was the one opposite Miss Lucas, so he took it. Fitzwilliam had stretched his long, muscular legs out across the coach, and Loveday was having to keep her feet well tucked against her seat. Although she was only a servant and not one he even knew well, Kit's anger rose. Her ticket had cost the same as Fitzwilliam's, and she had the same right to foot space as he had, and yet somehow Fitzwilliam saw himself as more important than her.
Kit bit his lip, manners keeping his tongue in his head. He didn't want to cause trouble in front of Miss Lucas, tempting though it was. It had been just like that at school. Fitzwilliam had been four years ahead of Kit, and bullying had been his forte. Unfortunately, Kit had been a boy slow to grow into his height, and thus, from the day he first arrived as a scrawny nine-year-old, he'd been an ideal target for a bully like Fitzwilliam, for whom blood ties had meant nothing more than to provide a better target. Fitzwilliam had left school and joined the army before Kit had grown big enough to exact any kind of revenge.
Plus, Kit's position as the mere son of a younger son had done him no favors with boys like Fitzwilliam for whom status was the most important thing. And Fitzwilliam's mother was the daughter of a duke. What Kit hadn't known at the time, and only found out later from his older sister, was that Fitzwilliam's father, his own uncle, had been a rake of the worst kind and had seduced the Lady Elizabeth Kirkpatrick and dishonored her. Thus, the marriage had been at the end of a gun barrel. Ten years later, the Lady Elizabeth had come running back to her father's grand house, Denby Castle, bringing with her two small children but no husband.
Too late for Kit to have used this snippet of gossip at school, not that he would have. He fancied himself as not cut from the same cloth as Fitzwilliam. But he'd never been so happy as when Fitzwilliam's grandfather had bought him a commission in the army and he hadn't gone on to Oxford, as Kit had been planning to do.
Leaning back in the corner of the rattling coach, Kit regarded his ex-tormentor with the eyes of a boy who has become a man. Although Fitzwilliam had a good twenty pounds on him, he could take him now if he tried. Boxing, or swords, if necessary, but planting him a facer would be the most attractive prospect. Right on the nose. Oh, how he longed to do that, to pay him back for all the torment he'd suffered at his hands.
Fitzwilliam looked up from stowing his exquisite kid gloves in his hat. "Will you be staying at Ormonde for long?" he asked, making it sound as though Kit were visiting someone's tiny cottage, not his ancestral home.
Unwilling to supply Fitzwilliam with any information at all, Kit shrugged. "I cannot tell. I may or may not. I have only to deliver Miss Lucas to my sister and they will be content."
Fitzwilliam smirked, glancing across at Miss Lucas, who appeared to be sleeping. "With the temptations of your beautiful, but somewhat out-modishly caparisoned companion, I should imagine you'll be staying a while." He paused, upper lip curling suggestively. "I certainly would be."
Kit dug his nails into the palms of his hands. It was the way the man spoke, as though implying he thought Kit would be staying just to try to seduce Miss Lucas and for no other reason. Clearly that was what Fitzwilliam himself would do if he had the chance, despite his scarcely veiled sneer at Miss Lucas's clothing. Like father like son certainly applied to him. Kit had never liked Uncle Robert, and neither had his sisters.
An overwhelming urge to protect Miss Lucas from the Fitzwilliams of the world washed over Kit. Instead of reaching out and throttling Fitzwilliam, though, he said, "It will very much depend on my mother and sister, whom I've not seen for a number of weeks."
Fitzwilliam smiled. Never had a man so neatly fitted the description of a rake. "And my lovely cousin, Ysella, how is she? It's so long since I saw her. She was scarcely out of the school room then. She must be what? Eighteen now and ready for her first season? And if she's as lovely as your mother, then she'll be a rare beauty."
How was it the man could make Kit so angry with everything he said? That by mentioning Ysella and his mother he had somehow besmirched their names?
"My sister does well," he said, keeping his voice level, and determined not to give anything away. "But what about you? I heard you were still in the army, yet here you are?"
Fitzwilliam's cold eyes slid sideways to rest on the apparently sleeping Miss Lucas for a moment. "The army and I have not yet parted company," he said, a sardonic smile curling his lips. He tapped his thigh. "Sent back to England with a musket ball in my leg, but I'm quite recovered now. I'm to join a detachment of soldiers in the west country next week, to rout out the nests of free traders who seem able to run the gauntlet of the revenue men down there with far too much ease. Quite dull work for me, but a necessary duty." He looked back at Kit. "I am at this moment on my way to visit my grandfather at Denby before heading west to my posting."
It was good to have the heads up on the arrival of soldiers in Cornwall, although they might not be going anywhere near Nanpean, but Kit's heart sank, nevertheless. Denby Castle lay a scant ten miles from Ormonde Abbey, which was how his long dead uncle had managed to seduce the young and impressionable Lady Elizabeth so easily. To think of his cousin, with his bad reputation with women, no, with everything, staying so close to not just Miss Lucas but Ysella as well, curdled Kit's blood.
Fitzwilliam stretched himself out even further, seemingly oblivious to the reaction he'd caused in Kit. "If it's all the same with you, old man, I'll snatch a bit of shut eye for a while." He smiled again. "I'll be getting off the coach in Marlborough in the morning. Perhaps we should share a carriage?"
And with that, he closed his eyes and forestalled any reply Kit might have been about to make.