Kiss from a Stranger Read online

  She was speaking to herself more than to the gentleman.

  Then, as she was afraid that he might laugh at her, she rose carefully to her feet holding Rufus close against her and said,

  “Once again, sir, thank you very much for your assistance and now I must take Rufus home and have his paw washed in case it becomes poisoned.”

  She looked at the trap as she spoke, and then enquired,

  “I wonder if – you would do – me one more – kindness?”

  “What is that?” the gentleman asked.

  “Just a little bit farther on is a magic pool. If you would throw this trap into it – it will never – again hurt any – living creature.”

  “You don’t think the owner of the trap, having paid quite a considerable sum for it, might object?”

  “He will not know what has happened,” Shenda replied, “and if it cost him money to put it there – then that is his – punishment!”

  The gentleman laughed.

  “Very well,” he said, “as you have constituted yourself judge, jury and hangman, the accused must pay the price for his crime!”

  He picked up the trap by the chain with which it was pinioned to the ground and, having pulled it free, asked,

  “Now, where is this magical pool?”

  “I will show you the way,” Shenda said.

  She walked ahead and, after passing several large trees, they came to it.

  The pool was looking, she thought, even more beautiful than when she had seen it two days previously.

  Now there were more kingcups out, more irises, and the sunshine coming through the trees glittered golden on the centre of the pool.

  The sides were dark and mysterious, as if they hid secrets that belonged only to the Gods.

  The gentleman went to the side of the pool and stood looking down at it.

  Then he half-turned to look at Shenda, who was standing beside him.

  With the yellow irises touching her gown and the trees behind her, she made a picture that any artist would have found entrancing.

  Her eyes seemed to fill her small pointed face, but instead of being the blue that was usually associated with the gold of her hair, they were a soft grey.

  Yet in some lights they had an almost purple tinge. It was a characteristic that was prevalent in her mother’s family.

  With the whiteness of her skin, which never seemed to be tanned by the sun, she had an ethereal beauty that was very different from what was admired as ‘the perfect English Rose’.

  Instead she seemed part of the woods and the mystery of the pool and the sunlight on the buds of the ancient trees.

  For a moment Shenda and the gentleman just looked at each other.

  If he thought that she was unbelievably lovely and hardly human, to her he was very handsome.

  His skin was brown, as if he had been a long time in the sun and his features were well formed.

  Yet, she thought, good-looking though he was, there was something hard about him, something which made her feel, although she could not explain it, as if he was used to giving commands.

  He seemed to have a strength that came not only from his athletic body but also from his mind.

  Then, as if he wanted to break the spell that had kept them both silent, he said abruptly,

  “Do you want the trap thrown into the centre of the pool?”

  “It is deeper there, I think, than anywhere else.”

  He swung the trap by its chain and then let it go.

  It fell with a splash and the water was thrown iridescent into the air before it settled once again into an unrippled silver stillness.

  Shenda gave a deep sigh.

  “Thank you very much,” she sighed, “and now I must take Rufus home.”

  She looked again at the pool and it was almost as if she embraced it.

  Then she turned resolutely away and started back the way they had come.

  The gentleman’s horse was still where he had left it, cropping the undergrowth for small blades of grass.

  He caught it by the bridle and suggested,

  “As you have your dog to carry, I will take you home on my saddle.”

  Shenda was surprised, but, without saying any more, he picked her up in his arms and set her on the saddle.

  Then, taking his horse’s bridle, he led it onto the mossy path.

  They moved in silence until, as the wood came to an end, Shenda could see the Vicarage garden ahead of her.

  She suddenly thought it would be a mistake for anybody in the village to see her with a strange gentleman or to learn that Rufus had been caught in a trap.

  It would cause a great deal of comment if anybody became aware that a stranger had carried her on the saddle of his horse.

  “Please, sir,” she said, speaking softly, “as my home is now just ahead of us – I would like to – get down.”

  The gentleman drew his horse to a standstill.

  Then, when Shenda would have slipped to the ground, he lifted her down with the same ease as when he had put her into the saddle.

  She was very light and her waist was so small that his fingers almost met round it.

  As her feet touched the ground, she turned to him and said,

  “Thank you once again! I am very – very grateful, and I will never – forget your – kindness!”

  “What is your name?” he asked.

  “Shenda,” she replied without thinking.

  He swept his hat from his head.

  “Then, goodbye, Shenda, and I feel sure, as we have destroyed what is wrong and disturbing in your magical world, that you will be able to go there again without fear.”

  “I-I hope – so,” she answered.

  She thought that there was something more she ought to say, then, as she hesitated, he said quietly,

  “If you are really grateful for the small service I have been able to do for you, I think you should reward me for my labours.”

  She looked at him in a puzzled fashion, not understanding what he was saying.

  Then he put his fingers under her chin, turned her face up to his and kissed her.

  She was so astonished that she was unable to move.

  It was a very gentle kiss and, as he released her, he mounted his horse.

  Before she could speak or move, he had ridden away.

  As she watched him disappearing through the trees, she thought that she must be dreaming.

  How could she possibly have been kissed for the first time in her life by a total stranger she had never seen before and who was trespassing in what she thought of as her own wood?

  It was only a few seconds before he was out of sight between the trees.

  Yet still she stood there, thinking that he had disappeared so quickly that she must have dreamt the whole episode and it was something that had not really happened.

  But she could still feel the touch of his lips on hers and, although it seemed incredible, he had actually kissed her!

  Rufus whined and the sound brought her back to reality.

  Holding the little dog close against her breast, she ran through what was left of the trees before they joined the shrubs in the Vicarage garden.

  There was a path she always used that led her to the side of the house where there was what was always known as the ‘garden Door’.

  She hurried through it, feeling as she did so that she had stepped back into her ordinary life.

  There was Rufus’s paw to be seen to and the sooner she forgot what had happened the better.

  Then she knew, as she moved down the passage that led to the kitchen on the other side of the house, that it was something she would never forget.

  There was no one in the kitchen because Martha had come and gone.

  She came in the mornings to tidy up and prepare the luncheon and then would go back to her own cottage, where she lived with her son, who was the village ‘loony’.

  Having looked after him, she would then return to cook the dinner for Shenda and h
er father.

  Martha was a good cook because she had served her apprenticeship at The Castle when she was a girl, but she had to have the right ingredients.

  As Shenda was aware, it was difficult to buy the good meat that her father enjoyed without sufficient money to pay for it.

  She knew that Martha would have left early today because she would be alone for luncheon, and there would be just something cold on a plate with a salad and the few vegetables that were to be found in the garden.

  She put Rufus down on the kitchen table that Martha scrubbed every day.

  As she did so, she was aware that the gentleman’s handkerchief, which was now stained with blood, was still around Rufus’s paw.

  It was an expensive handkerchief of fine linen and Shenda thought with a smile that it was unlikely she would be able to return it to its owner.

  He had asked her name, but she had not asked his.

  ‘It is unimportant, as I shall never see him again,’ she told herself.

  She thought perhaps that he was a visitor to one of the large houses in the neighbourhood.

  There were a few elderly people whose sons were at the war, but who had given up entertaining, although, when her mother had been alive, she and her father had sometimes been invited out to dinner.

  She was thinking it over, but the handsome gentleman with the smart clothes did not seem somehow to fit in.

  ‘Then I must have dreamt him!’ Shenda said to herself with a smile as she washed the little dog’s paw, Rufus whining only when she hurt him.

  She found some strips of clean linen in a drawer in the kitchen.

  She was just about to put the handkerchief into cold water to soak away the bloodstains when there was a heavy knock on the kitchen door.

  “Come in!” she called, thinking that it was somebody from the village.

  The door opened and she saw it was the large son of a farmer.

  “Good morning, Jim!” she said pleasantly. “What can I do for you?”

  “It be bad news, Miss Shenda!” he began.

  Shenda was still.

  “What has – happened?”

  “It’s you father, miss, but it weren’t our fault. We’d thought as ’ow the bull’d be in that field!”

  “Bull? What has happened?” Shenda asked in a voice that did not sound like her own.

  “That there bull, ’e knocked the Vicar off’n ’is ’orse, Miss Shenda, and I thinks as ’ow ’e’s killed ’im!

  Shenda gave a cry.

  “Oh, no! It cannot be true!”

  “It be, miss. Me father and the other men be a-bringin’ ’im ’ome on a gate!”

  With an effort, Shenda put Rufus, who was still standing on the table, down on the floor.

  Then, as she walked from the kitchen preparatory to going into the hall to open the front door, Jim followed her, saying over and over again,

  “It weren’t our fault, Miss Shenda. We thought as ’ow no one’d go into that field!”

  Chapter Two

  Driving towards the Admiralty, the Earl of Arrow thought with admiration of the Prime Minister.

  In defiance of the Cabinet and a great number of the Members of Parliament, William Pitt had appointed a man of his own choice to be First Lord of the Admiralty.

  In the Earl’s opinion, no one could have been a better choice than Admiral Sir Charles Middleton, now Lord Barham.

  Those who remembered him before he retired knew that he was the greatest Naval Administrator since Samuel Pepys.

  After Viscount Melville was forced to resign, owing to a charge of malpractice concerning his Department, there had been a great number of applicants for the position, favoured not only by the Cabinet but also by the Opposition.

  During the winter the Prime Minister had been struggling to form a Continental Coalition in the face of endless difficulties.

  There was the greed of potential allies for subsidies, fear of France, icebound roads that held up Couriers for weeks, wildly unrealistic Russian hopes of Spanish collaboration and the inability of foreign powers to understand the nature and limitations of British sea power.

  The Prime Minister faced these obstacles with courage. He had run the gauntlet of the Opposition wits with a new bill to draft militiamen into the Army, aiming thereby to recruit seventeen thousand regulars.

  Meanwhile, he scraped together every man who could be sent out of England and by March five thousand had been ready to set sail for India.

  The Earl was aware of a great deal of this and he had enormous respect for and confidence in the Prime Minister.

  Yet, as a sailor, he was well aware that the only real defence of England lay in her Navy.

  When he reached the Admiralty, he found that he was expected and was shown immediately into the office, where Lord Barham was waiting for him.

  He rose as the Earl entered and was certainly looking hale and hearty and nowhere near his seventy-eight years of age.

  The Prince of Wales and the Whigs who had opposed his appointment had announced that he was eighty-two and made great sport of it.

  Lord Barham held out his hand.

  “Arrow!” he exclaimed. “I cannot tell you how delighted I am to see you!”

  “I came as quickly as I could,” the Earl replied, “but it was hard to give up my ship.”

  “I knew you would feel that way,” Lord Barham said, “and I have to congratulate you, not only on being the youngest Captain in the British Navy but on your achievements. There is no need for me to enumerate them.”

  “None!” the Earl replied.

  He sat down in the comfortable chair indicated by Lord Barham and said with just a touch of anxiety in his voice,

  “Now, what is this all about? I knew I had to come home once I had inherited the title and my father’s estates, but I did not expect so much hurry over it.”

  “I wanted you,” Lord Barham said briefly.

  The Earl raised his eyebrows and Lord Barham continued,

  “I know of no one and this is the truth, Arrow, who could help me as well as you can do at this present moment.”

  The Earl was listening, but he did not speak as Lord Barham went on,

  “Not by coming to the Admiralty, which I know would be something you would dislike, but by assisting me without anybody being aware of it in the Social world which you have now entered.”

  The Earl’s expression, which had been one of curiosity tinged with anxiety, changed.

  He had been afraid when he had received a command from the Admiralty to return with his ship, which had been blockading the French at Toulon, that he was to be forced into the position of what he called an ‘office clerk’.

  He had intended to oppose this appointment by every means in his power, and it was a relief to realise that that was not what was in Lord Barham’s mind.

  The First Lord sat down in a chair next to his and said,

  “I have come to the Admiralty to find the muddle I expected, because, as you are well aware without my being unkind, Henry Dundas or Viscount Melville as he now is, made a mess of the Royal Commission’s Report on Naval expenditure.”

  The Earl nodded and Lord Barham continued,

  “He treated the Commission with scant respect and it avenged itself by exposing certain malpractices committed under his rule ten years ago.”

  “I heard something of the sort,” the Earl answered, “but, of course, news from England arrived in a haphazard manner, which made it difficult to follow the political situation.”

  “Melville had to resign and I am in his place,” Lord Barham said, “and now those who oppose me are waiting for me to make a fool of myself.”

  “That is certainly something you must not do!” the Earl exclaimed.

  “Now, where I need your help,” Lord Barham went on briskly, “is in discovering the leaks that are taking place in the Admiralty! Bonaparte’s spies are everywhere, even, I believe, in Carlton House!”

  The Earl sat upright in his chair.
r />   “Are you sure of this?” he asked incredulously.

  “Very sure,” Lord Barham said. “Napoleon knows what we are doing almost as soon as we do ourselves and it is a situation that cannot continue.”

  “Of course not!” the Earl agreed.

  “What I want you to do is comparatively easy,” Lord Barham said. “You are now a man of Social significance and the Prince Regent will be eager to make you his friend.”

  There was a twinkle in his eye as he added,

  “Your exploits against the French will undoubtedly amuse him, but make sure that he hears about them before you tell anybody else.”

  He saw the expression on the Earl’s face and knew that he had no wish to boast of his achievements.

  “This is not a moment for false modesty,” Lord Barham counselled, “and everything you do will have a reason behind it and will be very much a part of my plan for beating Napoleon!”

  “I can only pray that is what you will do!” the Earl said sincerely.

  “It’s certainly not going to be easy,” Lord Barham replied. “And now I am going to trust you with a secret that must be prevented at all costs from reaching France.”

  The Earl sat forward in his chair and Lord Barham continued,

  “A large and very important force of soldiers has been concentrated at Portsmouth under Lieutenant-General Sir James Craig. It will proceed – I quote – ‘on a foreign expedition going no one knows whither’.”

  The Earl was listening intently as Lord Barham went on, still in a low voice,

  “With commendable spirit, the Prime Minister, disregarding the possibility of invasion of this island, is preparing to launch this Army into the unknown.”

  “That is what I would expect of him,” the Earl said in a tone of admiration.

  “In front of what we call the ‘Secret Expedition’,” Lord Barham went on, “is a two thousand five hundred mile voyage pasts ports containing five undefeated enemy fleets of nearly seventy ships of the line.”

  There was no need for him to elaborate to the Earl, who had just come back to England, on the dangers that awaited such a journey.

  “What I am going to tell you,” he said, “is something that is not known to anybody – not even in this office – except myself. They are Craig’s embarkation orders!”