Along with a ballroom, Helston’s postal service could be found within The Angel coaching inn; a medium-sized room on the ground floor, it possessed a funereal atmosphere with a newly polished but bare desk and no seats other than the postmaster’s. Jack ambled past a gentleman struggling to string a box, one end between his teeth and the other wrapped around his wrist.
“I’ve a letter for London,” Jack stated, “and have you anything for myself, I’m–”
“Aye, Lord Winterbourne,” the tidy man behind the desk finished, opening a drawer and sorting through small bundles of post.
After an inordinate amount of shuffling, an undersized letter was slid across the surface. “Smells o’ violets. From one o’ your ladies perhaps, my lord?” asked the cheeky chap. “That tale of the Saxony princess kept us entertained for days. Did you really–”
“No, I didn’t. I’ve never been up in an air balloon. Ever.”
The postmaster’s clipped moustache drooped with disenchantment.
What the gossip rags didn’t know they invented and under normal circumstances Jack would care little – dare he say, even be flattered – but if Tamsyn had read that article, she would think him an insatiable mutton monger.
Wandering through to the adjacent taproom, he ordered an ale and after settling into a chair by the window, he broke the Rakecombe wolfhound seal.
Expecting mission-related details from the duke, he was startled to recognise the duchess’s quillmanship, violet scent erupting from the paper. He read aghast…
…and please find space in your portmanteau for these few items which I’ve heard can be readily obtained in Cornwall.
Namely, six pairs of French silk stockings in peony red, four tubs of clotted cream and for His Grace, two cases of cognac.
Yours in anticipation, Aideen, Duchess, et cetera.
Devil take it, clotted cream? On a journey back to London of at least eight days?
Rolling his eyes, Jack tucked it into his pocket.
“Here’s your ale, me handsome,” a pretty filly breathed in his ear, sliding the cloudiest liquid he’d ever seen onto the table. “And I be wonderin’, could you…could you sign this?”
A stained scrap of paper was placed beside the glass. Looked to be a pie wrapper.
“You be ever so famous,” she gushed, brown eyes twinkling. “And I be overgone at meeting your lordship. I dunno me alphabet but me friend Sally does, and she reads me all the gossip in them papers ’bout you.”
The lass produced a pencil from her apron.
Well, he could hardly disappoint…
“What’s your name, lovey?” he asked, putting charcoal to pie wrapper.
“Kate,” she said as he wrote. “I remember them words, ‘sable curls in wild profusion’.”
Jack preened. “Here you go then, Kate.”
“That one is me favourite,” she enthused, blushing. “The Corsair. Thank you ever so, Lord Byron.”
Jack scowled into his ale.
Bloody poets.
Lowdy hesitated between the Paris mud brown and the Egyptian brown. “Which do you think would suit?”
“They look remarkably…identical.”
Although Tamsyn herself had been tempted by a brighter hue, she’d ended up with what the seamstress had termed “Stifled Sigh” – grey with a hint of lilac.
The hussy-like coquelicot fabric had breathed her name and the vibrant Pomona-green silk had sighed its discontent at being thus ignored, but she just…couldn’t. The thought of people staring at her, noticing her, still brought out a rash.
Instead, she had braved some emerald ribbons from the haberdashery. Small steps to regain her bolder spirit.
