Page 2 of Marie’s Merry Gentleman (The Bookshop Belles #2)
CHAPTER 1
Alston Calling
Early November, 1814
“If you are unwilling to deliver me the books I require, I shall cancel the entire order forthwith and seek them from a provider who is punctual and reliable.”
T his most recent letter from ‘The Earl of Demanding’ - Louise’s nickname for him had stuck - was absolutely the last straw for Marie. If only it hadn’t arrived at the same time as their account from the insurance company.
It wasn’t that Marie had forgotten that particular creditor. She kept excellent ledgers and knew when each bill was due. Alas, she hadn’t counted on the bill being a good deal more than that of the previous year. Why was everything getting so expensive? She scowled at the two letters, lying side by side in front of her on the shop counter.
Things were busy in the lead up to Christmas, as customers stocked up on books to read through the winter and as gifts for the holidays. Then they would grow lean until about mid-February. If the Earl of Demanding could wait, Marie would be able to travel without worrying so much for her sisters.
By February, the roads, of course, would most likely be worse, so there was that consideration.
Louise and Bernadette were busy unpacking a fresh crate of books that had arrived from their father in France just that morning, stacking them in neat piles while Marie worked on the accounts and correspondence.
Taking another look at the calendar, Marie calculated that if she left for Cumbria soon, she’d be on the road for about two weeks, could deliver the books and get her payment, then be back well in time for the last flurry of book trade before Christmastide.
Bernadette asked, “Is there a letter from Papa here?”
“Not that I can find,” Louise said. “Marie, do we have enough money for us to get by until February?”
“If we’re careful, but we shall have to be very careful. And hope for a lot of book sales.”
Bernadette shook her head as she checked another French book for letters or notes from their father that might fall out from between the pages. “Maybe you should go to Cumbria then. The Earl of Demanding’s order is more than enough to cover all the bills.”
Marie huffed crossly, even though Bernadette was saying exactly what she was already thinking. And already mostly planning in her head. “I know.”
She had been on the verge of writing to the Earl of Demanding and suggesting he send his own trusted servants to come and collect the books. He was probably so demanding his staff had all fled in terror, so maybe he didn’t have any. Why else would he write, “I trust only your good self,”? She had visions of the earl to have the appearance of an ogre sleeping on a pile of books, like a dragon might lie on a mountain of treasure.
“And the longer his books sit here, the longer they won’t be paid for,” Bernadette added.
Marie answered waspishly, “I’m well aware of that.” She pinched the bridge of her nose.
Louise gave her shoulder a rub and said, “You’re doing an Estelle, thinking we can’t manage without you. Brutus and Ruth are doing much more than you think. And Rosie comes in to help Mrs Poole.”
Rosie was an extra housemaid Felix Yates had generously supplied for them, to help Mrs Poole so that Mrs Poole had time to be at the committee meetings with Miss Yates, and she was a great help to them all, a hardworking, friendly girl.
Bernadette and Louise kept on at Marie until she sighed noisily. “Fine, you win. I’ll leave next week.”
“Or you could leave tomorrow,” Bernadette said. “The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll be back.”
Marie hated when her sisters made good sense.
“No,” she said stubbornly. “Have you even looked at the route I’d have to take?”
Both Louise and Bernadette had to admit they had not, so Marie pulled out the road-book and coaching timetable she’d thumbed through far too many times of late.
“Look, this is where Alston is. About ten miles from Carlisle, hard by the Scottish border.”
“That… is a very long way,” Louise said, peering over her shoulder.
“The mail coach goes straight to Carlisle, of course, changing horses regularly, but I will need to stop and rest myself. Which means some overnight stays, and I want to send letters ahead to reputable inns to ensure I have rooms for those nights.”
Bernadette nodded reluctantly, obviously seeing the sense in that. “Peterborough, Lincoln, York…”
It was a vast distance, and would no-doubt be uncomfortable. Marie’s neck and back began to ache at the thought of it. “All the way to Carlisle, where I’ll have to hire a hack-chaise or something to take me the rest of the way. And I shall need to write ahead to arrange that, too.”
Even though she didn’t want to, Marie had suspected this was coming. She’d planned it all out. Just in case. Planning things helped her feel calm, and if the worst came to pass, well then she would know exactly what to do.
At least the Earl of Demanding had promised to pay all her expenses, so she would stay in quality hotels and inns and present him with a list of accounts on her arrival - and request as much reimbursement again for the return journey.
Marie knitted to pass the time in the cramped mail coach, each jolting yard bruising what felt like every bone in her body. Days of long travel were wearisome and frustrating. Her destination was still a day away, but she was at least thankful she’d made good time so far. The roads had been reasonably clear and the horses had made good time without being reckless. She was not going to say anything about how lucky they’d been though, because she didn’t want to tempt bad fortune.
Nevertheless, Marie was beginning to feel as if this journey would soon be over. She’d deliver these books, get the money and be home by Christmas.
Cumbria was such a long way, though, and as much as she’d planned out this trip, her nerves were on edge for things to go wrong. She’d never been this far away from home and everything looked so different. The stones people made their houses from were a different colour. The hedges along the boundaries weren’t the same plants she was used to. And the further north they travelled, the colder it became. She thought she’d packed enough warm clothes, but if it got colder she might have to wear them all at the same time.
The Earl of Demanding had better appreciate her efforts.
Knitting calmed Marie. Having something to claim her concentration helped block out the smell of bodies crushed into the carriage. The inane chatter coming from those same bodies still managed to break through, though.
“What are you knitting here, dear? Oh! That rhymes,” the woman beside her asked, with a silly giggle.
Why did people persist in asking her questions? Especially strangers who she would most likely never see again? It was fine with Hatfield folks, she knew them and they seemed happy with a polite nod and a, “How are you this fine day?” To which she knew the reply; “In fine fettle, and your good self?” That always made them smile, nod and move on.
But these strangers? They weren’t following the correct script.
What did it matter about her knitting, anyway? The pattern was in her head and they would be unlikely to see the finished product.
“A scarf,” she said, not looking up from her needles. It wasn’t a scarf really, but that was a handy response. It was almost a scarf, but one for her ears. Alas, she hadn’t really come up with a name for her design other than ear mufflers, as they muffled the sounds of the world around her. It was a circular knitted band of her own devising, with thicker, wider sections to go over her ears and muffle the sound. It was too hot to wear them in summer, obviously, but now the cold weather was here, onwards she knitted. Knitting gave her something to help pass the time on this uncomfortable journey, even if she did drop stitches regularly and have to pick them up again.
Much to her dismay, she had discovered around the end of the very first hour of the first day of the journey, that trying to read in the coach made her feel quite sick. Fortunately she had put some wool and needles in her travelling bag. When they came to their first stop after a few hours, she tried casting on.
“You already have a scarf,” the woman said.
Marie blinked hard and fought the urge to grunt at her fellow passenger. She paused and searched through her mind for a suitable response, missing her sisters so much at this moment. Estelle would know what to say, and Bernadette would match them and then turn the topic to herbs and gardening. Louise would probably bluntly tell the woman to mind her own business, but Marie couldn’t bring herself to do that.
Marie settled on, “It’s much colder here than I expected.”
“Looks rather narrow,” the woman said. “Is it for a babe?”
Marie breathed slowly and had to blink. She should add an extra shilling to the fee to the Earl of Demanding, for her pain and suffering. Or an extra pound. He could obviously afford it.
Answering the woman only encouraged her fellow passenger to ask more questions, which was not the desired effect Marie wanted. The sooner she could hand over these books, the sooner she could return home to Hatfield and the cosy counter with her ledgers and abacus.
Being in the bookshop so much, she’d forgotten how much regular people irritated and confused her. And there were so many of them!
The coach jolted on another rut and she dropped a stitch. Blast!
The woman beside her decided to start a conversation with another lady in the coach. This was a magnificent relief to Marie, but only for a little while as the inanity of their conversation made her ears itchy.
“Prattle prattle, chat?”
“Oh, yes, chat chat prattle.”
“La! Chat, prattle. Prattle!”
At least they weren’t expecting a response from her any more, and the interior of the coach was dry and quite warm from the many bodies in here. The howling cold and rain surrounding them removed any thoughts of taking an outside seat.
The weather was becoming foul. The passengers riding on the outside would be frozen to the bone, the poor things.
The town of Carlisle came into view at long last. Her bottom and her back ached from sitting on the uncomfortable wooden seat with her feet propped up on the precious box of books in the footwell. Several passengers had complained about the box taking up too much room, but there was no possible way Marie was letting such valuable cargo out of her sight, and certainly not risking it getting wet in the bad weather. Or falling off the coach! By the time they’d packed the Earl’s full order, there was almost a hundred and fifty pounds’ worth of books in the box. All of them carefully packed in with lambswool and an oilcloth cover Louise had actually stitched on in order to ensure it would be waterproof.
“The Coach and Horses, Carlisle!” the driver shouted from above, pulling the horses to a halt in a great clatter of iron-shod hooves on cobblestones.
“An original name, indeed,” Marie muttered as she clambered stiffly off the seat. “Thank you, I’ll carry that myself,” she said as a man reached to pick up her box. “My bag… oh.”
The bags were being thrown down at that moment, and Marie sighed, looking with a jaundiced eye at the puddle her portmanteau had just been tossed into.
“That one,” she said, nodding to it. Then she gave the porter and extra coin to help carefully carry the trunk of books into the inn.
The wind slammed the door shut behind her as she spoke to the landlord. “I have a room reserved. Miss Baxter.”
At least her meticulous preparations meant she was shown upstairs quickly to a comfortable, if small, private room. A little while later, a maid brought a tray with a bowl of stew and some crusty bread. There was also a pat of butter and a mug of pressed cider. Exhausted after so many long days of travel, Marie ate her dinner and toppled into the narrow bed, thinking gratefully that at least she would reach her destination on the morrow… even if she would have to turn right around and start back home again.
Her dreams were full of a beastly man who lived in a cold dark cave packed only with books.
Her plan figuratively fell to pieces the following morning, when she inquired about the hack-chaise she had ordered to take her to Alston.
The innkeeper laughed at her. “Ain’t no hack-chaise getting up that road, ma’am!” His accent was so thick she could barely understand him. She did manage to hear the words “up road” and frowned in puzzlement. “I don’t understand. It’s a little less than ten miles, according to the map.”
“Aye, but a fair bit of it straight oop!” He tilted his forearm to indicate a steep slope, before pointing out the front door of the inn at the Pennines looming in the near distance. “Oop there!”
“Oh.” Marie had not considered the elevation. Several times on the journey north the mail’s six horses had been supplemented by two more. They were heavy plodders to help drag the coach up steep inclines. It hadn’t seemed that steep because she had focused on her knitting. But now she looked at the hills around her, a single horse drawing a hack-chaise wouldn’t be able to take such slopes.
“A bigger coach, then?” she asked hesitantly, wondering if there would even be one available.
“Wheer is it yer goin’?”
“Alston. Alston Castle, to be exact.”
The innkeeper pulled at his lip in thought. “And ye’re wanting to take that there box wid ye?”
“I have to take this box with me,” Marie corrected. “And I have to go today.” That last part might not be precisely true, but delaying would mean her carefully planned schedule for the return journey would be ruined. If she wanted any chance of getting home by Christmas, she really needed to leave for Alston now.
“Can ye ride? I can get ye a lady’s mount with a sidesaddle, and a donkey to carry yer box.” The innkeeper shrugged. “Best I can do, today.”
He’d said the magic word, “Today” and she was grateful. “Then that’s what we shall have to do.” Marie lifted her chin. “Have the animals brought around as soon as you can, please. Daylight’s wasting.”
It hadn’t taken her long to realise that the winter days were getting even shorter the further north she travelled, even though Midwinter was still a little more than three weeks away. It was nine o’clock in the morning and the sun was barely up, not that she could even see it at all through the thick grey cloud that hung so low in the sky. Still, she should be able to make five miles an hour on horseback, which meant a twenty-mile round trip should be concluded in four hours or thereabouts.
Six hours later, she still hadn’t reached Alston. Marie ran out of curse words as she struggled to drag her extremely recalcitrant pack donkey up the steepest hill she’d ever travelled in her life. In this mountainous country, she had wildly overestimated her possible speed. To make things worse, the weather had turned nasty and bitterly cold. Sleet whipped at her face, stinging her cheeks with icy needles and chilling her to the bone.
“That must be Alston,” she groaned as the spire of a church finally came into view after another hour. “Come on , you horrible beast!”
The sleet fell sideways on her glasses, which she regularly had to wipe in order to see where she was going. It left blurred streaks in her vision. Finally she saw some people, but they delivered her startled looks as they moved about quickly between shops. Alston had a single narrow street and the dark clouds were even lower, making everything feel unwelcoming and ominous. Too tired and annoyed to manage her manners, she stopped the next man she saw.
“Where is Alston Castle?” she asked bluntly.
His accent was even thicker than the Carlisle innkeeper’s had been, but she managed to decipher that she still had two miles to go. He pointed farther up the street and then held two fingers aloft.
Marie thought she might scream. Two more miles? It may as well be ten.
There was an inn. It didn’t look much of a place, however. It was a single storey, dilapidated wooden building with a sign swinging outside proclaiming The Sally , painted with a gaudily coloured image of a rather buxom wench. After one horrified glance, Marie abandoned any thoughts of seeking refuge in such a suspicious-looking place and forged onwards.
The sleet landed heavier, stinging her ears and neck. Marie cast a worried look at the box of books strapped on the donkey’s back, hoping desperately that Louise’s waterproofing would hold. It didn’t bear thinking about what the Earl of Demanding might say if she arrived with water-damaged goods.
“Stupid man!” she shouted at the silent hills. “Stupid, demanding, entitled man!” The donkey balked yet again, so she turned her fury onto him. “And you, you stubborn son of a, a, a, SWINE!”
Darkness was falling but the sleet was at least turning into snow. It wasn’t quite as wet when it hit her face; an infinitesimal improvement. An irregular shape ahead of her interrupted the jagged outline of the Pennines against the grim grey sky.
“That… can’t be it.” Marie stared and gulped. “It’s a ruin!”
The pile of crumbling stones made a hideous first impression. Not far from the dark ogre caves of her confusing dream the night before.
But here it was. Alston Castle, and it was clearly and obviously a ruin. Gaping blackness in glassless windows, a huge archway crumbling and broken, massive stones fallen all around.
A substantial poplar tree grew within it, where a staircase should be.
For an awful, horrifying moment Marie thought she must have somehow mistaken the direction. That there was another Alston Castle in Cumbria, and she was going to have to retreat to the village and spend the night in that worrying-looking inn. There was no possible way she could get back to Carlisle tonight.
But no. Her horse had kept walking, dragging the donkey that was tied to the saddle along with it. Onward the horse walked, taking them through a dilapidated arch into an open grass bailey. There in front of them was the real Alston Castle.
Her body sagged with relief at the sight of it. A relatively new Alston Castle, and even against the blackening sky, it was magnificent. A vast edifice of crenellated grey stone, windows shining golden-bright with warm welcoming light within.
“Thank goodness for that!” Marie said gratefully, and urged her horse and the donkey forward. Finally she pulled up outside the huge timbered front doors. Climbing down stiffly, she approached the doors and swung the massive iron knocker.
The butler who opened it a couple of minutes later looked startled to see anyone, much less a bedraggled woman in a riding habit holding the reins of a horse and a donkey.
“Are you lost, madam?” the butler asked. He was an older gentleman with a rather magnificent curly white moustache and twinkling blue eyes filled with mirth; Marie thought he looked kindly but also had the capacity for mischief, even if his tone was a bit stiff.
“Is this Alston Castle?”
“Why, yes, madam.”
“Then I am exactly where I am supposed to be.” Marie drew herself up as tall as she could manage. “I am Miss Marie Baxter, and I am delivering books from Baxter’s Fine Books of Hatfield, as ordered by the Earl of Deman… ah, the Earl of Renwick.”
She pronounced it ren-wick, and the butler frowned slightly.
“The Earl of Rennick ,” he corrected her pronunciation.
“Of course, like Berwick and Alnwick,” she murmured to herself. “I do beg your pardon. I have only dealt with his lordship via correspondence.”
“Whoever is here, Mr Martin?” a deep voice demanded from further inside the castle.
“A lady from Baxter’s Fine Books, my lord,” the butler turned his head.
“A lady ?” The second voice said. The door was pulled open wider, and a tall, dark-haired man with a strong jaw, wearing a very fine dark navy coat, stared down at her.
“The Earl of Renwick,” the butler said, rather unnecessarily. “Miss Baxter, my lord.”
Marie was rather too busy gaping at the earl, who looked nothing like she had imagined. Well, she had thought that he might be dark and foreboding, but she had certainly not thought him to be only a little older than she - she doubted he was above thirty years of age! She had for some reason assumed him to be more like twice that. Mostly on account of how grumpy and demanding he was, like an entitled old man.
I should have checked Burke’s Peerage before I came, she thought.
“Why on earth are you here, and not Mr Baxter?” the earl demanded, scowling at her.
The snow continued to swirl around them as she stood there with her pack donkey and horse, no longer able to feel her feet. “My father is in France, my lord. You and I have been corresponding for months now.” She frowned back at him.
“You’re M. Baxter!” The light of understanding dawned in his expression, even if he looked no less displeased.
“Marie Baxter. Indeed. Do you think we might get these books inside? I believe the package to be waterproof, but I’m not quite certain.” She gestured at the donkey, and the earl gasped aloud.
“My heavens! Get them inside at once!”
“And the lady too, my lord?” the butler asked.
“Yes, of course, far too late for her to turn around now, it’s going dark.” Heedless of the thickly falling snow, the earl briskly strode to the donkey and began untying the ropes securing the crate to the saddle. “If these are wet, I’m not paying for them!” he called back.
Marie let the butler take her riding horse’s reins from her numb fingers. “We shall see about that,” she muttered under her breath, but she honestly thought she might be too exhausted to even muster an argument right now. Her legs were shaking and by this point she couldn’t feel her fingers or her nose.
“Inside, miss,” the butler said, his tone much more kindly than that of his master. “You must be chilled to the bone.”
“Yes.” She took a step towards the door, annoyed to find that she couldn’t feel her knees, either. She wobbled. “Oh, dear,” she said, quite irritated with herself. “This is no time to come over all faint.”
“Miss Baxter!” The butler’s voice seemed to come from quite far away as the world began to spin around her.