Quester Christmas bonus, images.

 

bear in mind this is a mercator projection so the poles look disproportionately large, but the former south pole is a massive lump of land. The premise is a rise of some 350 feet, and yes, I know that the melting of all the ice would only cause a rise of 65 feet but this is fiction, and the land sank as well because of reasons. And it's my world and I'll break it if I want to. 

Quester, feeling overdressed in official robes.

Quester

 an old Sf story I wrote years ago, revamped; post apocalyptic and dystopian, in which the earth has been much flooded by the rise in sea level due to global warming, and the effects of that halted by nuclear winter from various wars and accidents. An empire has arisen which initially banned religion as it caused wars, but has taken veneration of heroes, ironically, into a new religion. And yes, this is deliberate satire  An oppressive regime where heresy and mutancy is suppressed.  Higher technology is used but not understood, and the search for Lost tech is important. The hero of the tale is Leo Quester, a Judiciary, who has ultimate power as judge, jury, and executioner, and like the judges of old China must also undertake his own investigations. A roving troubleshooter, in fact.  And Quester is dumped into a boondocks military camp to investigate the murder of a political officer who has friends at court... 

Chapter 1  

 

“My thanks for your consideration, Lieutenant,” said Justicior Quester. “I appreciate being set down closer  to the barracks. I hope the manoeuvring of the ornithopter will not be difficult.”

“You are welcome, sir,” said the Lieutenant. “This rain is nasty; I’d rather have a proper downpour than this steady, penetrating rain, it seems to find its way into every garment.”

Quester agreed, but it would be a loss of dignity to the Inquisition to admit to it.  It was nice, however, not to be saturated, which was also a loss of face.  His grey cloak and deep cowl protected him from a lot of weather , but having to cross the parade ground would not have been comfortable. He nodded to the ornithopter pilot, and gave him a half-smile to indicate approval.

The colonel was awaiting him, and looked like a drowned rat. The scarlet tunic of the Mountas Militia was darkened by rain and his dark blue trousers clung unbecomingly to rather skinny legs. Quester noted, with some disapproval, that the man’s shirt collar, visible above the tunic, was less than clean, even in the rain.

The colonel was also trying to hide his nervousness, continually trying to loosen his collar, and shifting from one foot to the other. And well he might be nervous, reflected Quester.  After all, finding your Zampolit dead from violence did not generally happen in well-ordered Militia Regiments. Especially not a Mountas regiment, one of the elite units of purebred humans. He was probably an imposing enough figure when not saturated, and maybe even good-looking, with light brown hair darkened by the rain, a fair complexion and even features unmarred by radiation burns or the ravages of disease.  The way he kept tugging at his collar might explain why it was so soiled.

 

At least this island, or this region of it, was relatively pastoral, so that rain was just the standard slightly carbonated water.  No heavy pollutants to worry about.  It was a far-flung lump of rock, with some resources, chiefly carbons in deep mines. The local currents also made the location good for wave power and there was a hydrogen extraction plant on the far end of the island, to use in Imperial Zeppelins. Helium was too rare and precious to use for common transports, and only available from a secret underwater base in the Imperial Central Islands.  The greater number of the population of this Lincon-forsaken rock were Augsheep, augmented sheep, seeded with nanites to convert the carbons in the atmosphere into polymers to grow polywool fibres in the fleeces for greater durability.

The ornithopter  hummed behind Quester as the pilot took it closer to the unloading area.  They would be up and down for several days from the cramped, uncomfortable Zeppelin on which Quester was currently a passenger.  He considered sardonically that the Colonel must have received news that an Justicior was aboard with mixed feelings – relief at being able to pass the buck of his murdered Zampolit, tinged with a healthy drop of fear.

 

 

The Colonel surveyed Quester gloomily as they passed together into the dry of the main barracks block. It was a plain building of plascrete, with little attempt at decoration beyond a minimally ornamented neo-heroic archway to the main entrance.  Even the stocky telamones supporters of the arch were undistinguished and miserable looking.  Inside was little better.  The passageway was narrow and dark.  Sometime in the past, scenes of the lives of Heroes had been painted along the walls, but it had been so long since they had been renewed that they were cracked and peeling.  Somehow the result was worse than if the walls had been left bare, the peeling saints appearing reproachful in their decrepit dignity.

Quester had been requested to attend Colonel Rebet Strong at the small barracks on the Island of Cumry.  The Justicior had agreed to break his journey since the stopover was a scheduled one for the supply zeppelin.  The Colonel had seemed strained when he had spoken on the Skyph-link when he reported the murder of the Zampolit, as well he might; and now Quester wanted him to expand upon that bald statement.

“You said your Zampolit had been murdered; and you needed my presence,” said Quester.  “Is there some problem over what happened, that you need an Justicior? It is not an open-and-shut case?”

“My Zampolit was brutally murdered in his own room,”  Colonel Strong said.  “And he’s not been with us that long – the previous one died in battle.  It is an open-and-shut case, but I thought I ought to report this … since you had arrived ...”

Quester nodded, more encouraging him to go on than as a signal of agreement. Politically it was a sensible thing to do, to pass the buck to an Justicior. It was too much to expect any Zampolit, the Political Officer, to be much missed by anyone. Indeed, most people probably would cheer to lose the member of their regiment who kept them politically reliable, save when it brought a member of the Inquisition upon them. Few would have the sheer impudence to murder a man who held their political morals in his grasp, but that of course was why the colonel was glad to pass the buck.

“He was murdered,” repeated Strong, as though he could hardly believe it. “And by his own bodyguard!  I could scarcely believe it – but the evidence… you’ll want to see it…”  a tic started in his face, and he tugged tremulously at the gold braid on his scarlet tunic.

“I’ll see the evidence and see what it says to me,” Quester said quietly.  “You have held the bodyguard?”

 “Oh yes, Justicior, he’s in the cells,”

 “Does he confess to the crime?”

 “Well… sort of,”

 Quester stared at the man.

 “‘Sort of’?  What kind of reply is that?  Either he admits or denies guilt.  ‘Sort of’ sounds to me like a confession obtained by coercion, Colonel,”   He fixed the frightened officer with a piercing gaze over his high hooked nose.   Strong swallowed.

“He said it was his fault, Justicior.  He wouldn’t say any more.  No one’s coerced him at all,”  He tried to explain hastily.  Quester snorted.

 “It doesn’t occur to you that a conscientious bodyguard might just consider his principal’s death to be his fault by his failure to protect him?”  he asked scathingly.  “This man does not sound over endowed with brains – but I suppose that’s not a requirement for a minder,”

The colonel smiled thinly.

“Burdock’s an Ogroid.  Smarts aren’t their long suit,” he said dryly.  “But it’s not just his claim that it’s his fault that is the reason I have to suspect him – Clintwood’s head was stove in.  Surely only an Ogroid hand could do something like that.  Or, of course, a Highbred, but of course we have no Highbred troops stationed here, even if they were likely to stoop to murder one of we lesser beings ...” he lost himself in half sentences, as Quester scowled. Criticising the Highbred was sedition.  The colonel hastily went on, “Moreover, Burdock was stumbling around and confused when I got there.  Poor man, he must have suffered a brainstorm.  I don’t think he remembers anything about the incident,”

Quester grunted non-committally.  He had no intention of forming a theory without being in possession of all the facts; and he told the colonel so.

“And,” he added pompously, “I need to see the body before I can proceed any further,”

“Certainly, Justicior,” Colonel Strong gave no sign that the Justicior’s fussy and pedantic manner might irritate him.  A mere Colonel of the Militias, even the vaunted Mountas, did not criticise an Justicior!

 

 

Strong led Quester to the officers’ quarters.  The corridor was a little wider here, and a standard nine feet in height, and had been finished in synthstone effect panelling.  It had been painted as black marble, however, and the dark walls appeared to converge overhead. A few tracts and icons had been hung haphazardly along the walls; Quester played a game with himself as they proceeded of trying to guess who the icons were supposed to represent. The one channelling lightning had to be Benfrankin, the first ever Tech Savant, and saintly hero of their order, the Tech Wardens. The rest, on the whole, might have been of almost anyone. The one shooting someone might be Levyaswald, who had killed the heretical Kinny Dee, the doomed anti-hero who had started the Great Destruction by ordering the heretical penetration of space. Quester sighed; any man who held a lasrifle like that would be so deformed he would be disposed of as a mutant. However, Quester was pulled up short by one at the contrast it made with the others in its sheer staggering beauty. Unlike the gaudy, flat and unimaginative attempts that had preceded it, this painting was redolent with life.  It showed an unmistakable image of the saintly hero Jyowoshinton teaching the heathen how to fell a tree for firewood, with a small figure of the noble Psion Benfrankin in the background.  It seemed to glow with light and hope.

“This is good,” Quester commented.

“You think so?”  The Colonel sounded surprised.  “It was hung there to cover a wet patch.  I find it rather dull and colourless compared to the others,”

“Who did it?”

The Colonel shrugged.

“One of the men.  He was always daubing.  He got killed in the last campaign against the Commutants.  Not much of a soldier, anyway,”

Quester counted slowly to ten.

“Move this to a place that is not damp,” he said.  “It could be a treasure of your regiment one day.  And if there are other paintings, I would like to see them,”

The Colonel looked surprised.

“I expect they were burned,” he said, indifferently.  “The body is this way,”

`Quester resented the attempt at a subtle rebuke.

“It’s waited several hours for me,”he said mildly. “It will wait a few minutes more,”

Tenderly he unhooked the painting and exchanged its position for that of one of the undistinguished daubs.  Then he contemplated it whilst praying fervently to the Holy God-Hero Abe for patience in this uncultured hole.  When he was ready, he nodded to Strong.

“I am at your disposal,” he said.

 

 

Zampolit Clintwood’s day room was a contrast to the corridor.  It was mellow and light, with a large window overlooking the chapel.  The walls displayed synthwood panelling, and the wood colour chosen had been light ash, and someone had tried with a modicum of success to enhance the moulded grain with thinned darker paint run into the moulding.  Rich hangings of polywool velvet added to the atmosphere of comfort, and although the room exuded more of an air of luxury than Quester approved of, it was at least a welcome change from the dreary corridor. A single picture hung on the wall between a pair of golden velvet drapes, made of truesilk, Quester thought; and he had no trouble recognising the style of the dead soldier artist.  It showed the God-Hero enthroned, chin in hand, gazing thoughtfully out from sad, loving eyes.  Quester caught his breath.  Even the scorch marks along one edge did not mar its beauty. It was similar to the reproductions of the lost painting from Capital, showing a simple throne, as befitted the divine humility of the Holy Abe.

“Since this unit seems so sacrilegious as to try to burn sacred paintings, even of the Holy God-Hero,” he remarked, angrily, “I trust you will not object if I take this painting into my own care.  Unless the deceased has relatives,”

“Take whatever you want!”  The Colonel said, hastily. “I know of no relatives.  But I assure you, no sacrilege was intended – we can’t store the work of every common soldier who thinks he can profane the saints with his messes,”

It was that he was a common soldier, Quester decided.  Had the painter been an officer, perhaps this boor would have seen some merit because he expected to.  He wanted to say a lot; but contented himself with,

“From simple hearts and minds come forth true praise and worship.” Gravely he genuflected before the portrait of the God-Hero, and went to work. So beautiful a representation would inspire him in his work, he thought. 

 

 

 

The body had not been moved,; Quester supposed he should at least be glad of that.  The Zampolit had been a big man, and even death had not erased the laughter lines around the one identifiable eye.  The other eye was not merely missing; it, and the majority of the left hand side of the man’s face had been driven inwards, the skull crushed like an eggshell, brains seeping in a reproachful grey ooze from what remained of the cranium.  Strong retched dry, and Quester suspected that it was not for the first time.

“I do not require you to stay in here,” he said. Strong fled, gratefully. Quester knelt, with a grimace, to examine the wound more closely.  Blood and brain had spattered far, and he was obliged to kneel in some of the human detritus in order to get a better look.  He peered at the wound, noting its ovoid shape, deepest in the middle of the blow.  He frowned, thoughtfully.  The blow had been from a smooth object perhaps a little smaller than a man’s head, carrying great force or weight behind it.  The blow had been to the left temple, and seemed to have knocked Clintwood right out of his chair at the desk on to the floor.  He had been seated, then, when his assailant had struck.

Quester took his tweezers and several bags from his utility pouch, and a number of swabs, and began to take systematic samples from the wound.  God-Hero knew if he’d turn anything up, but he could swear that there was a greyish silver mark on a shattered shard of bone that was something other than brain matter.  It bore further investigation under lenses and with the alchemical analytical engine he had….acquired….from the Tech-Wardens. Quester grinned to himself remembering the verbal battle royal he had had with that self important fool  of a chief savant.  He, Quester, had managed to put the most pompous, the most sesquipedalian, the most polishedly specious arguments as to why he required this marvellous machine – and training in how to use it.  A reputation for pompous fussiness made most people write him off as a finical fool and give way more easily for a quiet life – and also covered his meticulous investigations under a cloak of sheer nosiness and interference.    Quester did not think that he would meet with the bland resistance so often presented from this colonel; he seemed at least genuinely concerned for the matter to be dealt with.  But one never knew.  No, one never knew.  Quester got gingerly to his feet, trying not to touch the revolting stickiness around him, and started to look around the room.  As he searched he whistled a praise to the God-Hero tunelessly between his teeth.  It was a bad habit, he knew, and his Father Justicior had sometimes commented that those who did not know him might think it heretical, but it helped him to think.

Something was missing.  Something very important.

Quester had not expected to find a blunt instrument left for him to discover; but there were certain items standard to the equipment of a Zampolit.  And one of them was a Datatab.  But the dead man’s datatab was nowhere to be found.

Quester exited the room.

“The Ogroid did not kill his officer,” he said bluntly. 

 

UPDATE

 Still ploughing through weather data, part of which involves reading this: 

most of it's pretty obvious now I know his handwriting, but some is challenging!

The Snowdrift full extended version now available!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CN1KYJCL 

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CN1KYJCL 

irritating parliament poem

 Cruella Haterman's declaration that being homeless is a lifestyle choice got my goat. And it being Guy Fawkes day... 

Remember, remember

the fifth of November

and raise a pint glass to old Guy

Who'd like to dismember

each moronic Member

and hoist them all into the sky.

for I disremember

that ever an ember

of intellect may be yet found

in any pretender

to Westminster's tenure

whose puerility doth us astound.

The Expeditor[Cobra] is live

 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CMDDH1R1

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CMDDH1R1

 

with The Snowdrift that will only be 11 books published this year - and scrambling to get The Snowdrift out, I doubt I will manage 'A Cavalier Approach to Murder' or 'Falconburg Ascendant' before January. we shall see!

snowdrift chapter 1

 I am hoping to finish this and get published for Christmas, but I need the shop to do something to the computer. I'm a week ahead for posting as I couldn't write as fast longhand and then had to transcribe....

 

 

Chapter 1

 

“Is it very far to the next stop?” whispered Lydia to Adelaide Prentice.  “Only I need the convenience, and I am so cold, I’m scared I won’t be able to hold it.”

“I’ll hold my shawl, so you can use the chamber pot  from under the seat,” said Adelaide.

Lydia scrambled down with alacrity, to fish out the utensil, and Adelaide did her best with her shawl. 

“I’m tired of travelling,” whined Tommy. “I want to go home to Mama.”

Adelaide sighed. How to explain to the child that he could never go home?

“Mama is dead,” said seven-year-old Lydia, firmly, with the understanding her four-year-old brother failed to manage. “She’s in heaven and she can see you being bad.”

“Am not,” said Tommy.               

“Are, too,” said Lydia.

“Hush, both of you,” said Adelaide. “It’s this deep snow which makes it so slow, it’s a wonder the driver can get through at all.”

They settled down, mostly, looking like a pair of small angels with golden curls and big blue eyes. Adelaide knew that with her dark hair and aquiline profile she would never be taken as anything but a governess; and indeed, she intended looking for a post as such when she had escorted Lydia and Tommy to an orphan asylum for indigent gentlewomen. Surely they would have the compassion to keep Tommy as he was so young; what else might be done for him, Adelaide did not know. Closer to them in looks was the young girl, no more than sixteen or seventeen, travelling with her maid. The girl’s name was Susan, and her maid was Joan, and Susan had shyly volunteered to entertain the children with stories. And the other traveller inside the crowded coach, an apple-cheeked farmer’s wife, who had introduced herself appropriately as Mrs. Appleton, had a fund of songs and rhymes to take Lydia’s and Tommy’s minds off the exigencies of travel.

 

Susan Wedderburn felt sorry for the two children. Not that she pitied them for being orphaned, she had lost her own father at a similar age to Lydia, and her stepfather was a stern man, a pillar of the chapel, and her mother meekly gave way to him on every point. And Susan had no intention of marrying a man fifteen years her senior, and going with him to India as a missionary’s wife.

She had confided in Joan, that she planned to run away, and Joan had told her that she needed a maid with her. Susan hoped that she might get a job as a governess, perhaps in a school, so Joan was welcome too.

Joan Kent thought her mistress had rats in her barmbox if she thought a pretty young girl was going to be employed as a governess. Joan had rather more down-to-earth thoughts, being a good seamstress herself, and knowing that Susan was a fine embroideress.  She planned to suggest to Miss Susan that they would do better to find enough rent for an apartment somewhere unfashionable but not downmarket, like Henrietta Street, for Joan had a cousin in London, who wrote about such things, and to make millinery or embroidered panels to add to dresses. They would have to be careful as Henrietta St. was not far from Covent Garden, in case they were taken as whores, but careful dressing should help them avoid that opprobrium.  And Joan was determined that she would look after Miss Susan, who had no more idea, in Joan’s belief, than a day old kitten!

 

Martha Appleton thought it a shame that young things like Miss Prentice and Miss Wedderburn should be all alone in the world, and Miss Prentice, who could scarcely have reached her majority, should have to have sole charge of a pair of lively orphans. She was wrong here; Adelaide was actually twenty-two, but she had a youthful face, given to laughter.

Martha was heading for Slough, where resided her daughter, Sukey, married to a baker, and about to present him with their first child. Sukey’s Matt had no family of his own save some snuffy old uncle, and Martha did not trust any midwife to manage to deliver her first grandchild properly.  She had left lists of things to do for Appleton, in her round, careful semi-literate handwriting, and adjured him to call for aid from the neighbours if he couldn’t manage without her.

He would manage perfectly well, she was sure, having too much pride to ask for aid, but would enjoy himself spending more time in the local inn than he dared do when she was at home, complaining of being abandoned, all for a farrowing, and would be so pleased to see her back that his little holiday in the inn would be soon forgotten. It was, after all, only fair that he should have some pleasure out of her time away, even as she would enjoy shopping in shops holding more than might be found locally. If only it wasn’t so bitterly cold! She spared a thought of pity for the passengers on the roof, who had ceded the inside of the coach to the women.

 

On the roof, Jeremy Atherton was glad he was young and athletic. He was on his way to London, intending to do a bit of shopping, before travelling on to Oxford. He  had stopped vibrating with excitement about the time he started shivering with cold, and was not displeased to have undertaken a quixotic act of kindness to the thinly clad little boy, also on the roof. Jeremy had fished out his spare pair of woollen stockings – in case of getting his damp, courtesy of his mother – for the barefoot child, and had called on him to creep inside Jeremy’s capacious cloak. The little body had warmed up and helped Jeremy keep warm too.

“You’re a good man,” said one of his fellow travellers. “Reckon the nipper’d have died of cold by now without you.”

“Poor little sod, what else could I do?” said Jeremy. “I ain’t averse to all of us huddling up close, you know; and taking turns on the outside.”

“I ain’t so proud as to refuse that offer,” said the man. “Name’s Kirk, August Kirk; I’m in haberdashery.”

“We’d be warmer if we were all in haberdashery,” quipped Jeremy, eliciting a laugh from Kirk.

The other two also edged closer, once one man had taken the initiative.

“Jack Dempsey, Bow Street Orficer, and I’d be glad to shake your fambles if it weren’t too perishing to get them out o’ my pockets,” said the burly man.

“Strewth, a trap? That’s all we needs,” said the slightest of the four men. “Name’s Will Kenton, and if that don’t mean nuthin’ I’ll be well pleased.”

“I don’t care if you’re ruddy Dick Turpin, as long as you’re warm,” said Dempsey.

“He has the thinnest clothes and is slender; put him on the inside, next to the brat,” suggested Jeremy. This was arranged, and the men made sounds of satisfaction, their repositioning having made an almost immediate difference to their comfort.

 

Jems, inside the gent’s cloak, reckoned he had fallen on his feet.  He could easily have prigged the gent’s ticker, aye, and the whole turnip if he’d a mind, but it wouldn’t be gratitude to a man who probably had saved his life.  Jems had managed to acquire enough to travel one stop on the stage, on the roof, which was half price, to escape his cruel master. He had washed off as much of the soot as he could, and had found some clothes to fit him left out draped on a line, and stiff as a board with frost, to discard the filthy clouts he wore for climbing chimneys.

He stuck his head out.

“A fine gent like you needs a servant,” he said, brightly to Jeremy.

“I’m not really well enough off for a... oh, I see,” said Jeremy. “I can’t give you much more than your keep, you know, the pater’s sunk everything in getting me into university. I need to do well so I can become a lawyer.”

“I c’n run errands,” said Jems. “You gimme a meal a day an’ I’m your man.”

“I should jolly well hope I could give you more than one meal a day,” said Jeremy, indignantly.

“Well, then, I’d think you was a ruddy angel,” said Jems, curling up and going to sleep. It is a measure of how poor his lifestyle had been before that he had never been so comfortable.

 

 

Will Kenton was a sneak thief by trade, and was travelling anywhere which was away from York. He had a shrewd suspicion of Jems’s former occupation and that he was a runaway, having himself fled indenture from the parish poorhouse when he was placed in one of the mills.  His education was rudimentary, but he could at least read the numbers on paper money when he found it, and could probably made a better living with blackmail, had it not been against his moral code. He was a little dismayed to find himself sharing a coach roof with a trap, his idiom for a Bow Street runner, but if the runner was outside of London, he had been paid for to come. The motto was ‘if the gentleman calls, the gentleman pays,’ and anyone who needed a runner paid their wages of a guinea a day. A small fortune! Only those with good reputations got sent out of the metropolis.

“You might need an assistant,” said Will, to Dempsey.

“Ho, yes, and you think I cut my eye teeth yesterday,” said Dempsey.

“If I had a job, I wouldn’t have to steal,” said Will. “And it’s miserable climbing in this weather, and at risk of being impaled by ruddy icicles if they get shook off of the eaves.” He shuddered, having been recently missed by a monster icicle almost three feet long and two inches across.

Dempsey considered.

“Same arrangement as the gent made with the boy until I’m sure of you,” he said. “I feed and clothe you. Show your worth, and I’ll split the dibs.”

“I can live with that,” said Will.

 

Dempsey knew fine well that one of his companions was a thief, but he’d been paid for the job he had been sent to do, and he hadn’t been paid to take this man.  And when Will Kenton made his suggestion, Dempsey was ready to consider it. Every runner had his network of informants, but to have  thief working for him, and maybe able to get at enough evidence by breaking and entering covertly to make it worth looking further by permitted legal means, might be useful. Bow Street officers were never reckoned to be the most scrupulous observers of the niceties of the law when it came to doing their jobs; and Dempsey was one of Bow Street’s finest in that he never took a bribe unless he thought the cove had very little chance of being convicted anyway, and he never used entrapment.

 

 

Johnnie Took, the driver, was an older, more experienced man than Abram Mayell, the guard, and he knew about bad winters. And this the worst he had experienced personally.  Johnnie insisted that Abram sat beside him, not at the rear of the coach, to share body heat. He bespoke as a matter of course a hot brick at each stage, which he tucked, along with his feet, into a fur muff a female passenger had once left behind her. He carried extra blankets as well, folded on the seat when not in use, but wrapped around his legs and Abram’s on the box. He let Abram have his feet outside the muff, and reminded him to stamp them periodically. Johnnie shook his head. He had never seen such weather as this, and he had known a few bitter winters! The drifts were deep, and the nags plunged into and through them, and only by keeping them going could he make sure they did not stand, and freeze. His muffler was over his face so he did not take the icy air straight into his lungs, and he wondered if his Mary would be worried about him. Well, it stood to reason she would worry.  But he would not make the stupid mistake of taking alcohol, a man who took alcohol in the cold died of sweat freezing, his da had told him that, and he had stopped Abram from having a nip.

 

Abram Mayell had resented his coachman stopping him drinking, but every other bit of advice of the older man had been good, so he shrugged sullenly, and accepted the prohibition. He was wishing he had not agreed to swap duties with Davy Blunkett, the other man on this run.

He had made a few bob hiring out the extra blankets he had had the foresight to bring, and when they got into London, he planned to warm up by spending it on Kent Road Kitty.

 

Mr. Anthony Buckley stamped his feet to keep them warm.

“Demme, Neze, I’m thinking of pulling off the road and seeing whether the Satterthwaites will put us up for a few days,” he said to his man. Ebenezer Buck was by way of being valet, chief ostler, and man of all work for his master, who was also in some degree his cousin, a relationship delicately acknowledged in a certain permitted familiarity in private, and the unbending of the gentleman to share his coach blanket with his man in such inclement weather.

“Miss Penelope will be all over you like smallpox,” opined Ebenezer.

“Unfortunately, yes, but I can put up with that for the sake of the nags,” said Anthony. He threw a sideways smirk at Ebenezer. “And my man, as well, of course.”

“The nags are worth more,” said Ebenezer, dryly. He regarded the four matched bays. “They’re flagging, you know; if the stage hadn’t broken trail, they’d be done to a cow’s thumb.”

“I know it!” said Anthony. “Built for speed not stamina; I’ll be selling them when we’re next in town if Uncle Everett is going to keep me dancing attendance upon him, now I’m his heir after cousin Walter stuck his spoon in the wall. Damned silly idea to only have one son when you’re an earl! Seven daughters in six years, stands to reason he never got another son, never gave Aunt Daphne time to rest!”

“Well, at least he has you,” said Ebenezer.

“Small comfort if I’m to be tied to an earldom,” growled Anthony. “Hello, there’s the stage – it’s not going to make the corner,” he added, touching the rein to signal to his horses to slow.