Kiss from a Stranger Read online

  Author’s Note

  The background of this novel is accurate and mostly from The Years of Victory by Sir Arthur Bryant.

  Bonaparte’s spies were everywhere and he did know about ‘The Secret Expedition’. What he did not know was where it was going.

  Nelson’s brilliant perception took him West following the French Fleet. It was a shot in the dark and, as he said to his secretary,

  “If they are not gone to the West Indies, I shall be blamed! To be burnt in effigy or to be buried in Westminster Abbey is my alternative.”

  He was right, and the same year he won the Battle of Trafalgar, saying as he lay dying, “Thank God I have done my duty.”

  Then his spirit passed and he became “One with England and the Sea”.

  Chapter One 1805

  Walking through the wood, Shenda was humming a little tune to herself that she thought was the music from the trees.

  It was warm for April. The leaves were already in bud and she knew that when she caught sight of the gardens at Arrow they would be brilliant with blossom.

  Nothing was more beautiful than the daffodils, golden under the trees, and the crocuses, yellow and purple, peeping their heads above the ground that had been so bare all through the winter.

  Then there were the purple and white lilacs, which came into bud a few days sooner than the syringa bushes.

  The woods had a magic of their own and there was a secret place in this one, where there was a pool that she was sure was magic.

  The kingcups made the borders of it golden and the irises were reflected in the deep silver of its surface.

  Whenever Shenda felt sad or lonely, she always went to her magic pool in the wood.

  There she felt that fairies were watching her from amongst the flowers, the goblins were burrowing under the trees and undoubtedly deep in the pool itself were water nymphs.

  Because she was an only child, her dreams were always full of the creatures from the other world that she felt was near her.

  She had always thought herself so lucky because Knight’s Wood, as it was called, ended just outside the Vicarage.

  While her father was busy with his sermons or his parishioners, who always had a grievance they wanted to tell him, she would slip away by herself into the magic of the wood.

  She was alone except for her most beloved companion, who was not at the moment, as he should have been, walking to heel.

  He had, in fact, scented a rabbit in the undergrowth that was just beginning to cover the ground.

  He had rushed after it so swiftly that Shenda was not aware that he had left her.

  Rufus had been with her ever since he had been a puppy.

  He was a very small attractive spaniel, who would otherwise have been trained with the other spaniels at Arrow Castle as gun dogs.

  The old Earl, who had been ill for the last three years, could no longer go shooting and his sons were both away fighting a monster called Napoleon Bonaparte, who was threatening to invade England.

  There was therefore no shooting in the woods and Shenda was very glad.

  She hated to think of anything being killed, least of all the birds she loved and who she believed sang to her as she walked beneath the boughs of their trees.

  She would sit by the magic pool where they came to drink, listening to their singing in the trees.

  In fact, she could not remember what were to her the ‘bad old days’, when there were shooting parties in the autumn and the keepers claimed that there were too many magpies, weasels and foxes in the woods.

  She loved them in the same way that she loved the little red squirrels.

  They would run up onto a bough at her approach, to sit chattering at her as if they thought that she had come to steal their nuts.

  Then, six months earlier, the Earl of Arrow died.

  While his funeral was impressive, there were few people in the village to miss him because they had not seen him for so long.

  They were also, Shenda knew, not particularly distressed when they learned that the Earl’s elder son, George, had been killed several months earlier in India.

  The doctor had said that the old Earl was heartbroken at the news.

  ‘Master George,’ as the servants who had served at The Castle for years called him, had been in ‘foreign parts’ for eight years and the younger people could not even remember what he had looked like.

  This meant that his brother had come into the title, but there again, ‘Master Durwin’ had disappeared at an early age into the Navy.

  Although those who followed the news queried whether he was part of the Fleet, which was defying Bonaparte by stopping the French ships from leaving their ports, nobody really knew for certain.

  There had, however, been stories lately about Captain Durwin Bow.

  With no one at The Castle, the people in the village came to the Vicarage with their complaints and grievances.

  The estate manager, who should have heard their querulous voices moaning that the roof leaked, the pump did not work or the windows were falling off their hinges, had retired two years before.

  He was now confined to his house with rheumatism, which prevented him from walking and a deafness that prevented him from hearing anything they said to him.

  “The old place be in rack and ruin!” Shenda had heard one of the estate workers say to her father only last week.

  “It’s because of the war,” the Vicar had replied.

  “War, or no war, I be sick to death of patchin’ up my walls and the thatch on my roof be in bad shape and all.”

  The Vicar sighed, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  Shenda knew that the war had meant a great deal of privation and misery for everybody.

  What her father missed more than anything else was not being able to hunt, as he always had, in the winter.

  He had, in fact, in the past been known as ‘the hunting Parson’.

  But the gentlemen who contributed towards the foxhounds were either taking an active part in the war or were so hard up that they could not keep them going as they had in the past.

  The Vicar had only two horses left in the stables and one was so old that Shenda found it quicker to walk than to crawl along on old Snowball’s back.

  She did not mind walking, especially when it was in the woods.

  Now her feet seemed to float over the green moss and the sunshine percolating through the boughs of the trees turned her hair to gold.

  It was then suddenly that she heard Rufus scream and she came back from her dream world to realise that he was not beside her.

  He was somewhere ahead in the distance and, as he went on screaming, she ran as swiftly as she could towards him.

  As she did so, she wondered frantically what could have happened.

  He was such a good little dog and never barked when her father was working in his study and she always told him not to.

  But she recognised the noise that he was making now was a cry of pain.

  She found him underneath an ancient elm tree and saw with horror that his paw was caught in a trap.

  There had never been traps in the woods at Arrow and she knelt down beside Rufus, who was no longer screaming but whimpering piteously.

  She saw that the trap was a new one and its sharp tooth-like jaws had imprisoned Rufus’s front paw.

  Desperately Shenda tried to force it open, but it was too stiff for her and she knew she that must get help.

  She patted Rufus, talking to him in her soft voice.

  She told him that he was not to move until she came back and that she was going to find somebody to help him.

  Because he had been with her almost all his life he seemed to understand what she was saying.r />
  Only as she rose to her feet did he whine miserably, but she saw with relief that he did not attempt to follow her.

  She then ran as quickly as she could back the way she had come.

  She realised that it was quite a distance to the village and she was wondering whom she could find to help her.

  At this time of the day most of the able-bodied men were at work and there would be only women in the cottages.

  She thought of her father, but he had left early that morning to visit an elderly lady who lived nearly two miles away, who had sent him an urgent message to say that she was dying. Because this had happened several times before, Shenda had been rather sceptical whether her father’s journey was as urgent as it appeared to be.

  Because he was such a handsome charming man, she knew only too well that a great number of women made any excuse to send for him.

  They enjoyed a quiet talk with a man, who was always courteous and unfailingly sympathetic.

  “If I am not back for luncheon,” he had said before he left, “don’t worry.”

  “I have already prepared myself for having luncheon alone,” Shenda answered. “You know that Mrs. Newcomb will ‘kill the fatted calf’ or whatever is appropriate and you might as well enjoy the luxury of good food while you have the chance!”

  Her father laughed.

  “I am not saying I shall not enjoy Mrs. Newcomb’s food,” he said, “but I shall pay for it by listening to her unending list of ailments, both spiritual and physical.”

  Shenda put her arm round his neck.

  “I love you, Papa,” she sighed, “when you say things like that. It always used to make Mama laugh.”

  Her father kissed her and she saw the pain in his eyes when she spoke of her mother, and thought that she had perhaps been tactless to remind him of her.

  It was impossible to think that any two people could be happier than the Honourable James Lynd and his beautiful wife, Doreen.

  They had been married after months of opposition from both of their families.

  But despite every gloomy prediction that it was something they would regret, they had been ecstatically happy.

  James was the third son of an impoverished Peer, who had an unproductive estate in the wilds of Gloucestershire.

  He had skimped and saved for his oldest son to go into the Regiment which he himself had served in.

  His second son was a cripple from birth and was nothing but a liability and an expensive one.

  The only thing he could offer his third son, James, was a Church on his estate with such a small stipend that it was almost an insult.

  James and Doreen had felt that nothing was important besides their devotion to each other and they had moved into the small uncomfortable Vicarage and filled it with love.

  Only when Shenda was born did they become a little more practical.

  James went to see the Bishop, who offered him the Parish of Arrowhead.

  He explained that the Earl of Arrow could afford to give the incumbents under his patronage a good stipend.

  James and Doreen had been delighted with their new home.

  It was a small Elizabethan house, very attractive to look at, and in good repair.

  Because James was not only a gentleman but also an excellent horseman, he had been welcomed into the County and the future had seemed golden.

  Then the war had come and everything had changed.

  Things were a little better, but only a very little, during the uneasy Armistice of 1802.

  But hostilities soon broke out again and there were more problems and less money and everything was more expensive.

  Shenda’s mother had died after a long cold winter when quite unexpectedly she had contracted pneumonia.

  It seemed to Shenda as if one moment her mother was there, smiling and laughing, and the next minute she was carried to the churchyard with all the village weeping because she had left them.

  Shenda had tried very hard in the last two years to make her father comfortable if not happy.

  Yet every day it seemed to grow more and more difficult and there was less money to spend on food.

  Besides which, her father could not help being over-generous to those in trouble, as he had always been in the past.

  “The Master’d give away the shirt off ’is back if anyone asked for it!” one of the servants had said tartly to Shenda.

  She knew that this was true and, while she remonstrated with her father, she knew he was not listening.

  “I can hardly let the poor man starve!” he would say when she pressed him too hard.

  “It is not Ned, the artful old beggar, who will starve, Papa, but you and me!”

  “I am sure we can manage, darling,” he would say and then go off and help somebody else.

  She worried about him because he had gone out in all weathers during the winter and had developed a persistent cough that kept him awake at night.

  She made him the herb and honey drink her mother had always advocated, but nothing seemed to make it any better.

  She knew what he really needed was three square meals a day, which was something they could not afford.

  “Perhaps when the new Earl comes back,” she had said to old Martha, who was the only servant left in the Vicarage, “he will realise that the wages have to be raised, to keep up with the rising prices and Papa just cannot manage on his stipend!”

  “If ’e don’t come back till the end of the war,” Martha replied, “then we’ll be in our graves with no one to mourn us! It’s that ‘Boney’, that’s who it is!”

  It was true, Shenda thought, that Napoleon Bonaparte was to blame for everything that had happened in Arrowhead.

  It was Boney’ who made two men come home wounded, one without a leg, the other minus an arm and ‘Boney’ who had emptied the larder at the Vicarage.

  ‘If I cannot ask Papa for help, where can I go to find a man to help me?’ Shenda thought now.

  Then, before she came to the end of the wood, she saw to her surprise a man on horseback coming towards her.

  She realised that he was a gentleman and was moving slowly, walking his horse between the trees and she ran on until she reached his side.

  Looking up at him, she saw that he was fairly young, his high hat at an angle on his dark hair, his white cravat tied in an intricate fashion and the points of his collar high above his chin.

  There was, however, only time to be thankful that he was there.

  “Help – me!” she said breathlessly, finding it difficult to speak because she had run so quickly.

  She saw the gentleman’s eyes travel over her hair, which was curling over her forehead.

  Then, as she saw that he was listening, she continued,

  “Quickly! Please – come – quickly! My dog is – caught in a – trap!”

  The gentleman raised his eyebrows at the urgency in her voice, but she did not wait for him to reply.

  She only demanded,

  “Follow – me!”

  She ran back the way she had come along the mossy path, where Rufus was waiting.

  He was lying still, but whining in a miserable fashion. As she flung herself down beside him, she was aware that the gentleman had pulled in his horse and was dismounting a little way behind her.

  He came to where she was and, looking down, said,

  “Be careful, the dog may bite you!”

  It was the first words he had spoken and she answered indignantly,

  “Rufus will not bite me. Please – open that – terrible trap! It should – not be here!”

  As she spoke, she held Rufus steady and the gentleman bent down and pulled the teeth of the trap apart.

  Rufus gave one yelp of pain and then Shenda was cradling him in her arms as if he was a baby.

  “It’s all right, it’s all over now!” she said softly. “It will not hurt you any more and you have been a very brave boy!”

  As she spoke, she was tickling him behind the ears, which Rufus alway
s loved.

  Then she was aware that the gentleman had taken a handkerchief from his pocket and had gone down on one knee beside her to bandage Rufus’s paw.

  Shenda looked at him and now, because he was beside her, she could see him more clearly.

  “Thank you, thank you!” she said. “I am so very grateful! I was wondering – desperately where I could find – a man to help me!”

  “There must surely be men in the village?” the gentleman asked with a twist of his lips.

  “Not at this time of the day,” Shenda answered. “They are all at work.”

  “Then I am glad I was able to be of assistance.”

  “I cannot – thank you – enough!” Shenda enthused. “But how could anybody put that – wicked – ghastly trap in the wood. There has never been one here before!”

  “I suppose it is one way to get rid of the vermin!” the gentleman replied.

  “A very cruel way!” Shenda said. “If any animal gets caught, it could suffer for hours, if not days, before anyone finds it.”

  The gentleman did not reply and she added, almost as if she were speaking to herself,

  “How can anyone wish to – create more – suffering when there is so much of it in the world – already?”

  “I suppose you are thinking of the war,” the gentleman remarked. “All wars are wrong, but we are fighting to defend our country.”

  “To kill an animal – unless it is to feed someone – cannot be – right!”

  “I can see you are a reformer, but animals prey on each other. Too many foxes, if they are not hunted, kill the rabbits, which I am sure you think are very pretty.”

  She realised that he was mocking at her and there was a faint flush on her cheeks as she said,

  “Nature, if left alone, will create a balance of its own – and I cannot bear to think of foxes suffering hours of agony or – even rabbits struggling in a snare until they hang themselves!”

  “That is a woman’s point of view,” the gentleman argued, “and if one wants to preserve game, then those who prey on the birds have to be accounted for.”

  He spoke in a crisp dry voice and, because Shenda thought that it would be hopeless to argue with him, she said,

  “To me, this wood has always been a magical – beautiful place, and now, if I am to be barred from coming into it by traps and cruelty, it will be like being – turned out of – Paradise!”