Read Online The Sparks Fly Upward by Diana Norman - Free Book Online

‘Missus?’
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜Are they after who I think they’re after?’
    â€˜Maybe.’
    They could hear his hiss of resignation over the noise of the churning carriage wheels; Sanders and Beasley were well acquainted.
    It was cold to have the windows down but Philippa and Jenny peered out of the one facing the river while Makepeace kept watch on the landward side. Despite the advance of London, this was still deep country. Once they’d passed Chelsea Hospital and the red brick terrace of Cheyne Walk, they were among reeds, meadows and copses interrupted here and there by the drives to large, aloof houses. ‘Plenty of places to hide,’ said Jenny.
    â€˜He’ll keep to the road,’ Makepeace said. ‘He’s no countryman, our Beasley.’
    There was a moon, the mist giving its light the texture of gauze so that objects were indistinct except when lit to the front by the carriage lamps and, to the rear, by the horsemen’s poled lanterns, both sending a wavering, passing light on the erratic levee, picking out mooring posts, flashing on water and boats upturned like stranded seals on the slipways.
    On Makepeace’s side a badger that had been trotting along the side of the road turned away from the sudden glare, showing a disgruntled, striped backside as it disappeared into undergrowth.
    They began to breathe more easily. Reach House was just ahead. If that was where the fugitives were making for, they were either already there or would turn up when the lawmen had gone.
    Makepeace had chosen somewhere to live that was secluded and had no reminders of the past yet would allow Philippa access to London society. She was never happy unless she overlooked water, so she’d picked a house in an area once favored by distinguished men and women who had also valued the river, good air and privacy. Philippa’s researches into the history of this part of Chelsea had uncovered both Anne of Cleves and Katherine Parr managing to survive their marriages to Henry VIII nearby. ‘Though I fear Sir Thomas More—his house is to our north—was less fortunate,’ she’d told her mother.
    â€˜What’s happened to him, then?’ Anything that occurred before the Mayflower set off for the New World fell through Makepeace’s grasp of history.
    The house was understaffed by the standards of the locality since Makepeace only wanted servants around her that she knew and liked and, in any case, preferred to wait on herself much of the time—a preference that might prove a blessing tonight. Apart from the vegetable garden and frontage, the grounds had none of the manicured neatness of its neighbors and its park was returning to wilderness.
    Philippa loved it. It was a kind house; she liked to imagine that Cleves, Parr and More, walking by the riverside, had watched workmen building it for the then Marquis of Berkeley. True, the men hadn’t built it very well because its middle had fallen down, leaving only one tower, but its replacement by bowed, Queen Anne rose-colored brick gave the house an architectural irregularity that added an apparent contentment, like a plump wife and tall husband posing together for a portrait.
    Joining Makepeace at the right-hand window, she saw the flat, slated roof of their gatehouse a little way off between the trees, a remnant of the old house where Sanders and Hildy now occupied the apartment above its narrow arch.
    The carriage jerked suddenly as Sanders pulled the horses from a trot to a walk. Makepeace reached for the flap. ‘What is it, Sanders?’
    â€˜Spotted ’em, missus. Two figures, just nipped inside our archway.’
    There was no outcry from the horsemen behind them; only Sanders had seen what he’d seen. But from the gatehouse to the house lay a carriageway circling a large lawn, all of it open. If the constables followed them in, the fugitives would be caught in their lights as well as