Jessica Read Online Free

planted beneath the apple trees.
    Gathering her cut, soiled skirts she ran toward the cottage, throwing open the door and shutting it quickly, pushing the bolts across firmly. Tamsin hurried down the stairs in her voluminous white gown, a nightcap set at an angle on her plaited brown hair.
    “Miss Jess? ...”
    “Hush, Tamsin. Look, there they are!” Jessica pointed through the window at the men running from Ladywood. They ran swiftly, their bodies bent. There was no sign of the donkeys, but the lights bobbing through the trees were closer than ever and the hounds were giving deep voice as they pursued the smugglers.
    “Miss Jess, you didn’t go out there?”
    Jessica nodded rather shamefacedly, for she could not understand her own foolishness.
    “After all I’d warned you!”
    “Shh. Look.”
    At the edge of Ladywood the lights had halted. They could see the men’s faces by the light of the lanterns and how hard it was to control the straining hounds that still sought to follow the scent. A man on horseback appeared behind the others, moving slowly through the gap in the wall into Applegarth. He controlled the nervous horse expertly, and Jessica had no trouble in recognizing Francis.
    She held her breath as he stared toward the cottage. Would he come to the door? She brushed her skirts nervously, for although she could remove the stains, how could she conceal the great cut where Nicholas Woodville’s knife had freed her?
    Then Francis turned back to his men and they melted back into Ladywood, the lights gradually vanishing among the trees. Only the constant sound of the hounds told that they were there.
    Tamsin lowered the blue and white curtain and turned to Jessica. “Whatever possessed you, Miss Jess?”
    “I don’t know, and that’s a fact. I saw them going in and felt the urge to follow. Oh, don’t say it again, Tamsin, for I know I should not have done it!”
    “But what happened to your clothes? Did they catch you then?”
    “No. No, I stepped against a trap and it caught my hem.” Jessica stared at the sliced-through cloth.
    “Then how did you get free?”
    “Sir Nicholas Woodville freed me.”
    “Sir Nicholas? But what were he doing there?” Tamsin stared at the window as if seeing into Ladywood.
    “I don’t know. His horse was tethered just inside Francis’ lands, and he seemed in a veritable anger about Francis’ men falling on the smugglers.” She glanced at Tamsin as she realized what she was thinking.
    “Miss Jess, do you think Sir Nicholas be the leader of the smugglers?”
    “I don’t know. I really don’t know. He was there, certainly.”
    “Well, I never. They reckon hereabouts that someone of the gentry must be leading the ring, but no one outside the ring itself is in the know. But Sir Nicholas Woodville? — that be a hard pill to swallow, him being so upright and strict to the letter of the law. A right turn-up that would be, and no mistake.”
    “We don’t know that that was why he was there, Tamsin, so don’t go jumping to any conclusions.”
    “Oh, I shall say nothing. I’m no daft curmudgeon to go sounding my tongue foolishly. Nonetheless, ‘tis a strange happening, a real strange happening.”
    “Tamsin, let us have another pot of your excellent Formosa tea.”
    “Reckon us’ll sleep ‘till noon tomorrow.”
    “It doesn’t matter if we do.”
    “That’s true enough,”
    The kettle was singing happily on the range when Tamsin set the pretty blue and white crockery on the table. “Miss Jess, did you see the Woodville coach earlier?”
    “Coming down from Varangian? Yes. Rosamund was in it.”
    “Ah, that’s what I were coming to. ‘Tis whispered, only whispered, mind, that Miss Rosamund do have her heart on her sleeve for Sir Francis.”
    Jessica stopped toying with her spoon and looked up swiftly. “How much of a whisper is it?”
    “That’s neither here nor there, if ‘tis a whisper then ‘tis suspect. She do spend some time over there, and