Read Online Burning Bright (Brambridge Novel 2) by Pearl Darling - Free Book Online

Bill, even if you do look like the spit of each other.”
    “You knew who I was? Why didn't you say?” James brushed his hair out of his eyes. It was becoming a damn nuisance.
    “Err. I. Well. Pint of bitter was it?”
    James nodded. Ned trotted back to behind the bar and, with hurried movements, started to fill two pints.
    “Do you know what Brambridge has gone through since you left?” Bill stretched and cocked his head to one side. A large paw appeared on the table. “Down, Brutus.” Bill clicked his tongue and the paw disappeared. James stood and peered over the table. The enormous head of a wolfhound gazed back at him from the gloom under the seat.
    “He’s new,” James said, sitting back down gingerly. Soldiers he weren’t afraid of. Large animals with many teeth were something else. He couldn’t count the number of farmsteads he had vaulted through chased by something on a chain.
    “You’ve a lot to catch up on.”
    “I’ve noticed. My—” Dammit but how could he phrase it now? “Stanton estates do not seem to be prospering.”
    Bill snorted. “The only thing that is doing well is Harriet’s school.”
    “She always liked her books.”
    Bill nodded. “Yes. But she works for a pittance. Don’t know how she did it but she persuaded Edgar that Brambridge needed a dame school. I think she told him that the more the children were happy, the more lace they would produce.”
    She had, had she? Harriet was nothing like the old, uneducated ladies who normally ran dame schools, their service more a glorified child care operation than a seat of any real learning. “Who pays her?”
    “I’m not sure. I’ve seen Edgar hand her some money on occasion. I think he likes her to be beholden to him.”
    “That sounds like my cousin.” Indeed it did, much more than the concerned man who had greeted him in the drawing room.
    Bill nodded. “Your father started laying off workers on the land as the crops turned bad. He got Edgar to turn them away. Then the mine started failing. Now the village is mostly unemployed, and the young people have started leaving to go to the bigger towns where there is employment. But even there they starve because no one looks out for them.”
    James frowned. Spoilt crops did not tally with what he had seen on the adjoining Anglethorpe estates that were positively gleaming. And there was no reason for the mine to fail.
    “I've helped where I can,” Bill continued.
    “The Rocket still sails?”
    “We couldn’t stop. The money from the goods was all that has kept many families afloat. We'll be sailing again in a week.”
    “Brandy?”
    “Amongst other things.” Bill brought his tankard to his lips and took a long swallow. “It's hard going. A new Riding Officer has been assigned to the district because of all the stories of smugglers in our coves. Not many customs men applied for the job when the last one died.” He gave James a sly look. “Running the contraband gives the unemployed some work, and allows the village to remain above the bread line.”
    “Is everything alright, sirs?” Ned bustled back, a drying cloth over his arm, two pints of ale and a loaf of bread on a tray in one hand and a plate of cheese in the other.
    James nodded. Ned laid the food on the table.
    “How did you know who I am?”
    “You've got the look of your grandfather,” Ned looked around and drew up a stool. “I knew of him when I was younger. Look just like him you do, although his hair had a reddish tinge. You must have a picture of him somewhere.”
    There were many dark portraits hanging in Brambridge Manor. James hated them all. But there hadn’t been one of his grandfather.
    “How did you know him?” Bill asked, pulling a hunk of bread from the loaf.
    “It was before he won Brambridge. My father owned the inn in Honiton. The Five Cocks. Lord Stanton was the fourth son of an impoverished titled family.”
    So that was why there was no portrait of him up there with the rest of the