Emily Goes to Exeter

miles away.

‘Get on with it,’ said Lord Harley’s muffled voice crossly. ‘I cannot see a thing with your skirts over my face.’

She pulled her feet up on to his bent back and he steadied them with his hands. ‘Stand up in one swift movement,’ he commanded ‘and hold on to the latch of the skylight for support.’

Emily closed her eyes and sent up a prayer and then stood upright, her hands searching and scrabbling blindly for the catch. Her fingers found it and she hung on tightly.

‘Now,’ he said quietly, ‘open the skylight.’ Lord Harley prayed it would not prove to be rusted shut.

Emily lifted the latch and with one hand threw the skylight full open. It fell back on to the roof with a crash as she steadied herself with her other hand against the side of the opening.

‘Hold on tightly,’ he commanded, ‘and move your feet to my shoulders, and I will start to straighten up. Look out and see if you can see anyone about.’

Emily did as she was bid and soon her head was through the skylight opening. She carefully surveyed the empty fields stretching on either side in the moonlight. ‘No one,’ she said, twisting her head to look down at him. ‘But he may be hiding under the eaves where I cannot see him.’

‘That is a chance we will have to take,’ came Lord Harley’s voice.

‘You mean that is a chance I will have to take,’ said Emily.

‘Are you going to stand on my shoulders arguing all night, or are you going to get on with it?’

Restraining an impulse to kick him in the head, Emily grasped either side of the skylight opening and said, ‘Ready.’

He seized her ankles and hoisted her up and through she went. She rolled over on the sloping roof and began to slide, slowly at first and then faster, until she flew off the roof and landed headfirst in a snow-drift. Only fear that Captain Seaton might still be lurking about stopped her from screaming with outrage. She burrowed her way out and made her way around to the barn door and slowly pulled back the bolts and opened it. Lord Harley had already climbed down and was putting on his outer clothes. ‘Good girl,’ he said, looking at the small snowman that was Emily standing in the doorway. ‘Soon have you warm and dry.’

He picked up Mr Fletcher in his arms as easily as if the lawyer had been a child and carried him out of the barn. Emily went ahead, following the path they had made until they came to the cart. ‘Push the cart for me,’ said Lord Harley. ‘No point in putting him on it here, the snow is too soft.’

Emily remembered suddenly how, when she was younger, she had lit the nursery fire herself and the exclamations of horror that had produced from her mother. Her darling hands! She must never spoil them with such hard work when there were servants about. She pushed the cart resolutely to the road, where people walking during the day and a few light carts and wagons had already made something of a track. Lord Harley laid Mr Fletcher tenderly on the cart and then began to trundle it along the road.

‘I hope he does not die,’ said Emily.

‘I think our little lawyer is tougher than he looks. Besides, his love for Mrs Bisley will carry him through anything. Keep very close to me and do not leave me when we reach the inn. Our would-be murderer may still be about.’

‘Miss Pym would call this an adventure,’ said Emily, beginning to shiver with cold from her fall into the snow- drift.

‘No doubt,’ he said with a laugh. ‘I think she is destined to have many adventures. I think she will attract them. Now you, my kitten, will soon be back with your loving parents and this will all seem like a bad dream.’

Emily walked on in silence. She tried to think of her comfortable home and of Miss Cudlipp, but it all seemed so boring. She tried to think of the beautiful Mr Peregrine Williams but was all too conscious of the power and strength and masculinity of the man beside her.

When they reached the inn, he told her to open the doors for him and lifted Mr Fletcher into his arms. ‘I want you to come with me until I undress him and get him to bed. I do not want you to go wandering about the inn on your own.’

He followed Emily up the stairs. She opened the door to the Red Room and lit the candles and stirred up the fire, carefully keeping her eyes averted from the bed where Lord Harley was stripping the lawyer and putting him into his night-shirt. At last he said, ‘You may look now. All is respectable.’

‘Now what?’ said Emily.

‘Sit by the fire. I will lock you in here for a moment. I will see if that dog Seaton is in his room. He may have returned and be pretending to be asleep.’

He went out and turned the key in the lock. Emily went over to the bed and felt the sleeping Mr Fletcher’s brow. It was reassuringly cool and he slept deeply. Then she noticed a letter on his bedside table with ‘Mrs Bisley’ written on it. She broke open the seal.

My dear Mrs Bisley [she read ]. I never was a man of courage and am not yet ready for marriage. I have decided to set out on my own now that the storm has broken rather than stay and face you. Be assured at all times of my admiration and respect. Yr. Humble and Obedient Servant, Fletcher.

Emily was standing with the letter in her hand when Lord Harley came back into the room.

‘I cannot understand it,’ he said. ‘Seaton is in his room and drugged dead to the world. I slapped him and shook him, thinking he was feigning, and I even stuck a pin in the fellow. I am afraid Seaton is not our man. What have you there?’

Emily held out the letter to him and he read it. ‘This is most odd. Mark you the correct grammar and neat hand? I doubt if Seaton even knows how to spell.’

‘He may have an accomplice.’

‘That we shall endeavour to find out. I shall come with you to your room to make sure all is well.’

‘I am so very hungry,’ said Emily.

‘Well, change your wet clothes first. I’ll keep this letter. But first, we had better lock Mr Fletcher in safely.’

He went into the Blue Room before Emily but found only Hannah Pym in a drugged sleep. Then he waited outside while Emily changed her clothes.

‘I shall have a whole new wardrobe made of wool and flannel when I return to London,’ said Emily. She was wearing a lilac muslin gown with a spencer and with a Norfolk shawl draped about her shoulders.

They went down to the kitchen together. Lord Harley took a lantern and went on down to the cellars to look for a bottle of wine. Emily took out a loaf of bread, a slab of butter and some Cheddar cheese.

When he opened the kitchen door, she was standing by the table clumsily slicing bread, her short auburn curls gleaming in the candle-light, her eyelashes lowered. He felt a sudden wrench at his heart. She looked so very young, so very endearing. He thought of all the women he had known and for the first time in his life felt old and slightly soiled. What Miss Emily Freemantle deserved was a fresh young man of her own age.

She looked up at him and then the smile died on her lips as she saw the bleak expression in his eyes. Something in him had retreated from her. She found that she had been hoping their adventure had brought them together, that it had proved she was not a pampered ninny. Her expression grew as bleak as his own.

‘So who do you think our would-be murderer is?’ asked Emily, accepting the glass of wine he was holding out.

‘I think I might hit on a way to find out.’

‘And will you call the authorities, the parish constable?’

‘Our villain is clever, whoever he is. Were they not all in their rooms? I am sure we finally looked in every room but the captain’s because we were so sure it was the captain. I think I have a plan, but you are looking tired, my child. Finish your bread and butter and go to bed.’

8

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

Robert Louis Stevenson