Page 6 of Feathers in the Wind
‘Well, he’s a soldier. You’d expect him to know what he is doing,’ Bess agreed. ‘I must say, he’s quite pleasing really. Not that I really like dark haired men.’
‘Bess,’ Joan chided.
Bess shot her stepmother a sulky sideways glance. ‘It’s not as if there is a parade of young men to our front door, is there, Joan? I’m twenty-one and I shall be an old maid soon. Tell me, how old is Adam Coulter?’
Joan thought for a moment. ‘He would have been thirty-two on his last birthday,’ she replied.
‘There, perfect,’ Bess declared. ‘What do you think of him, Perdita?’
‘Me?’ Perdita turned to look at Bess. ‘I’ve scarcely had a chance to form an opinion.’
Privately she thought Adam Coulter exceeded Bess’s description of ‘quite pleasing’. The years of soldiering had left their mark on his face. A silvered scar about two inches long skimmed his right eyebrow, giving him a rather dangerous demeanour, but it was not just the physical marks. The dark, intelligent face had a wary look to it, as if ready to spring into action at the rustle of a leaf, and those grey eyes missed nothing, no nuance of conversation or indiscriminate flutter of a hand.
Bess selected another needle and under the pretence of resuming her task, settled in for gossip. ‘So why did he go off to the Continent, Joan?’
When Joan didn’t answer, Bess looked up and cast a Perdita an uncertain glance.
‘Joan?’ Bess prodded.
‘I can’t tell you,’ Joan said.
‘But we’re family. Surely we have a right to know,’ Bess wheedled. ‘Did he kill someone in a duel?’
Joan looked up, the surprise on her face giving both women the answer before she spoke. Joan recovered her demeanour. ‘Someone died,’ she said. ‘That’s as much as I can tell you.’
Bess huffed out a sigh. ‘Very well, then tell us why is his name Coulter when the rest of you are all Marchants?’
Joan cleared her throat. ‘Adam is… ’ She paused for a moment, her gaze drifting to a corner of the parlour. ‘Adam is the baseborn son of my brother, the late Lord Marchant. When Denzil was about three or four, my brother came home with a boy of a similar age and told us that he was the son of a woman called Ann Coulter who had died. As the child’s father, he felt incumbent to take him and treat him as one of his own children.’
Bess set down her needle and put a hand to her mouth. ‘How did his wife take it?’
A humourless smile lifted the corner of Joan’s mouth. ‘She was not amused and indeed when my brother was from home she spared nothing for the boy. Adam had a poor time of it. As Lady Marchant despised me equally, Adam and I became quite close. I couldn’t protect him from her but I could provide something of a haven. We were both outcasts in my brother’s home.’
Perdita glanced through the window at the man and wondered about the lonely child. Even from this distance the difference between Simon and Adam couldn’t have been more marked. Adam stood nearly a head taller than Simon and as lean as Simon was of middling height and stocky build. He held himself straight and still while Simon fidgeted.
‘Small wonder you have no wish to return to Marchants,’ Bess said. ‘Does Lady Marchant still hold court there?’
Joan shook her head. ‘No, she is dead these eight years past. Denzil’s wife, Louise, is now Lady Marchant in her place.’ Joan’s mouth tightened. ‘Louise is no better. My brother secured places at court for both boys. Denzil as a page and later a member of the royal household. He sent Adam to be a soldier in the King’s lifeguard.’ Joan smiled. ‘You wouldn’t have recognised him then, quite the darling of the fine court ladies, but it all ended badly. Denzil and Adam fell out and Adam left court to avoid a scandal. Last I had heard he took up arms in the Continental wars.’ Joan glanced out of the window, her gaze falling on her nephew’s straight shoulders. ‘And now he has come home. Why do I feel trouble will follow him?’
‘But it sounds like he and his brother are reconciled,’ Bess observed.
Joan scoffed. ‘Denzil would only have attempted a reconciliation if he thought he could get something useful from Adam. Now Adam has turned him down, I don’t expect any love to be lost between them in the months to come.’ She clapped her hands. ‘Now we really must get this banner finished in time for the muster.’
* * *
‘They’re definitely improving.’Simon sounded more hopeful than realistic.
Adam crossed his arms and thought for a long moment before he replied. ‘There is some improvement,’ he conceded without much enthusiasm. ‘You there…’
He abandoned Simon and strode over to a young lad of about nineteen whose pike waved about in an uncontrolled fashion, causing his fellow pikemen to jump away from him as it threatened to skewer them.
‘Lad, you’ve a troop of enemy horse bearing down on you at the gallop, you have to stand firm. Wedge the end into the ground like so.’ Adam demonstrated, whacking the end of the pike into the ground so firmly that a shudder ran up the stave of the ancient weapon and it cracked and splintered in his hand. He swore volubly and dropped the broken weapon as the blood welled from a cut on his hand.
Simon ran over to him, blanching at the sight of welling blood. ‘You need to see Perdita,’ he said. ‘She’s very good with this sort of thing.’
Adam wrapped a none-too-clean cloth, proffered by the boy whose pike had splintered, around the gashed hand and stomped back to the house, a wave of depression washing over him. If Simon Clifford paled at the sight of blood, God help him in the heat of battle.
He found Perdita Gray standing in the doorway waiting for him.
