Read Online Smuggler's Moon by Bruce Alexander - Free Book Online

the town and the sea. We were so long on the way that I began to suppose that we had taken some secondary road that led still farther upward. But not so, for the team of four slowed at the driver’s direction. I heard the brake applied. We came to a halt just at the door of a manor house, which had been added onto so often and grandly that it had reached the proportions of a small castle.
    And yet it had no grand entrance, no portico with which to impress the visiting aristocracy and nobility; perhaps hereabouts Sir Simon was the only one of his class in residence; perhaps then Deal was his fiefdom.
    As these thoughts did thus flash through my brain, a man emerged to meet us and, leaving the door symbolically open behind him, to bid us welcome. Among the landed in the country, a great host of house servants seems to be considered something of an embarrassment. They keep, rather, a number of retainers who are capable of duplicating thework of the rest. The man who came out to greet us was one of these and should not be thought of as a butler. No, indeed, he was no butler, for he lacked the degree of coldness any proper London butler would surely have had. He was simply a Kent fellow of middle years, big and strong—a proper countryman—and he had come out to assure us that we were expected but most of all that we were welcome.
    He managed to convey that just by stepping out upon the little porch that was raised a step or two above the ground. He chuckled to himself as he bowed and approached the door of the coach and threw it open.
    “Here, miss, give me your hand, and I’ll help you down.”
    Clarissa took advantage of the offer and stepped down very lightly indeed. Sir John was next: he did not attempt to jump, as was his wont, but accepted the proffered hand with good grace and hopped down quite nimbly. Only I, who was last of all, displayed a certain clumsiness in exiting the coach; my heel caught in the step, and had the jolly retainer not been there to catch me, I should have tumbled face-first into the dust of the driveway.
    “Hi, watch it there, my lad. I’d not want to present you to the master with a broken head. Steady as she goes, eh?”
    He pulled himself to his full height, put a hand atop his protruding belly, as if to hide it from sight, then spoke forth in the manner of one who had memorized a piece in order to have it down precisely.
    “My master, Simon Grenville, Baronet, was unavoidably called away this day. He deeply regrets not being present to welcome you himself, but he assures you that his household staff will do all that they can to make you comfortable in your rooms until dinner, at which time he will join you.”
    “And the horses? Our driver and coachman?” asked Sir John.
    ”If they will but drive round the house to the stable, sir, the staff there will do all that needs be done for the horses. The driver and coachman will be taken care of by us in the house, you may be sure.”
    “And one last question: How may we call you?”
    “Will Fowler, sir, and my family has been in service to the Grenvilles for three generations. Now, if you will step this way, please?”
    And so it was settled. We were assured that there would be time for a nap before dinner, and that we would be knocked up in time to dress.
    “I am grateful for that,” said Sir John to me once we were alone in the room we shared. ”I had briefly entertained the notion of visiting the magistrate. Yet when a man is as bone-weary as I from travel, all he can do is seek rest.”
    After we woke and dressed, we were ushered in to the large formal dining room where we found a tall and rather handsome man awaiting us, obviously our host, Sir Simon Grenville. I saw no sign of a hostess—a Lady Grenville—and I wondered at that, but Sir Simon made no immediate explanation, and I thought perhaps there was no Lady Grenville. We took our places, with Sir John at his right, of course, and the longest meal of my life began. There was