Free The Emerald Swan by Jane Feather Page A

light o’ day, and no mistake,” Jebediah muttered. “An’ if it means givin’ up the monkey to the law, then you’ll not ’ear a peep outta me.”
    The turnkey’s heavy footfall brought an end to the conversation as their heads turned as one toward the massive wooden door with its small barred insert.
    The nag looked even sorrier in the bright morning light than he had the previous evening and Gareth had serious doubts how far he’d get with his double load as well as the luggage before he was winded. Certainly not the seventy-odd miles to London.
    The pillion cloth was moth-eaten but Miranda had refused the horsehair pad, complaining that the bristles sticking through the canvas were like porcupine’s spikes. She now balanced easily behind Gareth on the animal’s withers as they rode out of the stable yard, but there was something ominous about her present preoccupation.
    “I do hate being cheated,” she said eventually, as he turned the horse away from the town up the steep path leading to the castle and the clifftop.
    Gareth sighed. He’d been wondering if that was behind her silence. The owner of the livery stable, a one-eyedex-mariner with a head as bald as an egg, had blatantly overcharged his noble customer for the nag and the pillion cloth. Gareth had heard Miranda’s sharply indrawn breath but he had had no interest in arguing pennies with an unsavory cheat. The man would expect the wealthy gentleman to bear the cost without demur. It was one of the unspoken social rules of their world.
    “It was a relatively small sum,” Gareth pointed out.
    “Not to everyone,” Miranda said, so softly that it could almost have been to herself.
    Gareth felt an absurd flash of discomfiture. Wryly he acknowledged that Miranda’s point of view would be vastly different from his own.
    The nag stumbled over a loose stone on the steep path leading up to the sprawl of Dover castle on the clifftop. Instinctively, Gareth put one hand behind him to steady Miranda.
    “I’m in no danger of falling, milord,” she said. “Perhaps I should dismount and walk up.” The nag’s breathing was growing more labored and without waiting for his response Miranda suited action to words. She jumped down and sprang ahead of them up the path, kilting her skirt to free her leather-clad legs. She neither walked nor ran, Gareth thought. It was more of a dancing progress. Chip had jumped from her arms and was pursuing his own erratic path upward, leaping from stone to stone, pausing frequently to examine some object that had caught his eye.
    Watching Miranda’s quicksilver movements, the glow of her hair as the wind swept it back from her face, the grace and agility of her slender frame, Gareth began to question whether this deception would work.Anyone who had seen and known Maude would never be taken in.
    If Miranda was to take Maude’s place with Henry, then Henry must never lay eyes upon Maude during his courtship visit. It was fortunate that Maude had never been to court. Miranda must make Maude’s debut before Henry arrived. Those close to the family who knew Maude to be a wan, reclusive invalid would somehow have to be persuaded of the transformation. That would be Imogen’s task. One she would undoubtedly be up to.
    Henry had said to expect him before Michaelmas, a mere five weeks away. Could Miranda be prepared in such a short time? But of course she could. She was born a d’Albard and such birth and lineage would come easily to the fore. She seemed adaptable and had a sharp wit; she would take to the new life like a duck to water, he was certain of it.
    He watched her stride ahead up the path. They were in the shadow of the castle walls now and he knew they would be under observation from the square towers of the inner bailey. Not that a man on a winded nag would pose much of a threat. The lord of Dover castle was an old acquaintance, and if he hadn’t had Miranda in tow Gareth would have claimed hospitality in the form of