As they advanced through the trees, the sound of the sea became audible at last, breaking on rocks along the coast below them. When they emerged from the wood, they found themselves still close to the track and on a slope overlooking the beach. There was no one in sight in either direction, although to the west the buildings on the coast at West Bay could just be seen in the far distance.
“What are those objects?” said Julia, pointing out to sea directly ahead.
Mr. Hatton looked carefully at the indistinct shapes breaking the surface of the water between the waves, and then replied, “James Lindsay is a local magistrate and he has told me that the smugglers sometimes need to keep their goods offshore until the revenue men have passed by. So what you can see may be markers or floats.”
“For what, Mr. Hatton?”
“They sometimes sink casks of spirits, having put them on rafts or roped them together in groups, all attached to large stones. Then at night they can be pulled up to the surface of the water and taken to shore by small fishing boats like that one below us there.”
Julia looked down onto the beach where he was pointing, and eventually she managed to glimpse a small fishing boat that had been pulled back from the water’s edge and partly concealed between some rocks.
“Do they ever get caught by the revenue men?”
“Not often, as they can be out-numbered by the smugglers. Even if someone is caught, the jury of local people often acquit them. There is a lot of sympathy in Dorset for the smugglers, because the goods they bring in keep prices down, and would often not be available otherwise. Did you or Mrs. Harrison purchase any lengths of silk as gifts whilst you were staying in Bath?”
“Only one,” she said, surprised, “for my mother.”
“Well, that was probably smuggled into Dorset not far from here! Now, Miss Maitland, we had better not linger, just in case anyone thinks of coming by. Let us go back through the trees as far as we can, and then rejoin the track closer to the farmhouse.”
On the walk back to the manor house, they discussed the various options open to Mr. Hatton, and concluded that he needed to make further inquiries now of Sir James, and anyone else who could be trusted not to disclose that the smuggling was being investigated.
When she descended the stairs the next morning, Julia was surprised to see that her aunt was not in her usual place for breakfast in the dining room, and found her walking slowly and steadily across the salon with Mrs. Jones and Martha in close attendance. Indeed, her aunt seemed anxious to venture out of doors for the first time.
“I do believe that I shall be well enough to travel home to Bath in a few days, Julia, perhaps on Monday. So, if there is anything else that you wish to do before we leave here, please do not delay in asking Mr. Hatton.”
Julia’s hidden reaction to this news was considerable dismay at the thought of leaving Morancourt and all that it had come to mean to her, and having so little time left with their host. But she replied quite calmly to her aunt.
“He did suggest that he could teach me to dance the waltz in the ballroom, Aunt Lucy, if you would agree to that.”
Julia knew that, if the same question were to be addressed to Mama, the answer would be no, and that Aunt Lucy would be aware of that. But she also knew that Aunt Lucy shared some characteristics with her niece Sophie, and that she did not always choose to do exactly what people expected of her.
As Mr. Hatton came into the hall from his study to join them, Aunt Lucy replied, “I don’t see why not, my dear, in a private setting such as this. Don’t you agree, sir?”
When Mr. Hatton heard what Julia’s question had been, he turned to her and said in a very level voice, “That is very good news, Miss Maitland.” It was only when she saw the expression in his green eyes that she realised how much the answer meant to him.
Ten
The morning brought two letters from Derbyshire.
The first was for Julia and came from Emily at Cressborough Castle. She had been over to see Sophie and Harriet at Banford Hall, and she passed on all the gossip from the sisters. They were all looking forward to Julia’s return, and Papa had asked for her to be told the same. Emily said that the Earl and Countess were in good health, and that they would all three be staying at the Castle for the next few weeks. Freddie had finally written a short note from Spain, to say that he was well but not looking forward to the colder weather, as the regiment was likely to be in the mountains over the winter. There was no mention of Dominic Brandon.
The second letter was from Mama for Aunt Lucy, full of pride at having achieved an invitation from the Earl and Countess for Julia and her aunt to stay at the Brandon’s town house overnight on their forthcoming journey back to Banford Hall. There was no mention of Dominic Brandon in the letter, but seeing Julia’s face fall at the suggestion of returning via London told her aunt what she had already guessed.
As Mrs. Jones was in the room with them at the time, all Aunt Lucy said was, “We can discuss our route to Derbyshire when we get back to Bath, my dear. I have suggested to Mr. Hatton that we leave here on Monday morning. He will escort us as far as Beaminster, and we will travel on from there.”
Her aunt laid the letter down and picked up a book she had been reading, so Julia went up to her room and began to write a long reply to Emily. She recounted some information that she had heard about the local smuggling, but made no mention of Aunt Lucy’s ankle.
Later that morning, Julia came across Mr. Hatton in the hall, and he asked her to join him in his study.
“I have spoken to Mr. Whitaker, Miss Maitland. There is no farmhand named Jem on the estate here as far as he is aware, nor have any of our labourers been injured recently. I have sworn him to secrecy about the matter, and it was rather odd, as somehow he seemed to be relieved at the news.”
“Do you think that he suspects that something is going on somewhere on the estate, but he does not know what?”
“That’s possible—he may not feel that he knows me well enough yet to trust me completely, but hopefully that will change soon.”
Julia looked thoughtful, then said, “Do you think that Mr. Jones might be involved? He was born in this area and has been employed here for much longer than Mr. Whitaker, I imagine.”
He looked startled for a moment. “Of course, you said that Mr. Jones had taken Jem into the kitchen for his wife to attend to the wound. So presumably Mr. Jones had either found him lying somewhere, or was with him when he was hurt?”
“Yes, one or the other.”
“Hmm.” He was drumming his fingers on the desk as Julia waited. “You did offer to help me, so could you ask his wife whether they, and in particular Mr. Jones, have any close friends in the village?”
“Very well,” she replied. “After I have seen how Aunt Lucy is, I will look for her and ask the question.”
Later Julia found Mrs. Jones upstairs, sorting the household linen.
“In case I do not have a better opportunity, Mrs. Jones, can I thank you now for being so kind to my aunt since her accident? It has been a great weight off my mind that she has had you to care for her and to call upon. And I have been able to make several excursions into the countryside around here knowing that she was in such good hands.”
Mrs. Jones looked flustered but flattered at these remarks, and assured Julia that it had been a pleasure to be of assistance. From this, the conversation moved on to how long Mrs. Jones had been at Morancourt, where she had been born and brought up, and how she had met her husband.
“Mr. Jones was a soldier as a very young man,” she told Julia, “but I met him after he came back from France about twenty years ago. There was a whole group of them who went to join the army from near here, for most could not find any employment in this area. He was lucky, for his father was already employed on this estate so, when Mr. Jones came back, he was offered a job by Mr. Henry Hatton. My husband did well, and ended up being in charge of the farm here.”