“I have heard that there are caverns in the hills,” Cassandra said wistfully, “large enough to hold a banquet in; that there are torrents above the dales, and villages famous for the plague; that one might climb, with effort, along paths that rim the abyss, and reward with endless beauty.”

“Then we shall endeavour to find them all,” I told her decidedly. “Sally! We require a pony trap, a driver, and a provisions hamper with the greatest despatch!”

WE DEPARTED LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER — MY MOTHER having interceded upon her return to The Rutland Arms, and requiring a full account of all our plans, and the wasting of precious moments while she hung in agonised indecision, uncertain whether to claim the peace of the empty parlour or join us in our wandering. Peace at last won out; and we were suffered to drive away with an enormous basket of victuals at our feet, a variety of lap-robes against the dust, Cassandra’s sketching-pad and box of crayons, several novels, two sunshades, and an enormous blunderbuss of ancient vintage, which Mr. Davies propped on the box beside our driver — “for with these murderin’, godless ruffians abaht, miss, tha’ll be wantin’ a sound piece.”

Our driver was the selfsame Nate who had carried my urgent missive to Sir James Villiers two nights before, a strong young fellow of perhaps twenty, whose wall-eyed stare was roundly disconcerting. I wondered which eye he trained upon the road, and determined not to ask.

He pushed his cap to the crown of his head as we settled ourselves within the trap, and scratched ruminatively at his thick reddish hair.

“The Blue John Cave is what Tha’ ladies be wanting, ah’m thinkin’,” he observed ponderously, “wit’ all Tha’ talk o’ bankets underground, but it’s a good twenty mile fra’ here, an ah’ve never been, myself. The Plague Village’ll be Eyam, what lost so many a good bit ago, and that’s no more nor less than five mile. As fer they abysses” — in his mouth, the word was nearer abbesses, as though it were a nunnery we sought — “I reckon tha’ll find such along the Hucklow road, above Eyam. We might just do it, an’ Tha’ has time.”

Cassandra sighed over the lost Blue John Cave, but upon hearing that Nate could produce a Stone Circle for her delectation — a scattering of monoliths, from an ancient burial ground, not far from Eyam — she learned to be happy.

The sun was hot, and the wind stirred by the horse not worth mentioning; the pony trap wanted cushions for its hard wood seats. We swayed along the stony road at a drowsing pace, our sunshades propped against our shoulders, while the scents of drying grass and soiled sheep’s wool drifted across the fields to either side. I had tucked Tess Arnold’s stillroom book, wrapped in an embroidered shawl, under the mattress of my bed; and though my person was at leisure, my mind would often return to the closely-written pages. Not a glimpse of them should I have before tomorrow; but much might be elucidated at Chatsworth this evening. Various of the Devonshire family had known a good deal of the stillroom maid.

We passed through the town of Baslow and the hamlet of Stoney Middleton. Cassandra’s eyes were bright and her colour fresh; I should never mistake her today for the younger image of my mother. She kept her sketchbook open upon her lap as we drove, and despite the swaying of the equipage and the necessity of keeping a firm hand-hold on the seat, managed a fair likeness of Nate, as viewed from the rear. In the Plague Village of Eyam, the horse was let to grass for an hour while we walked the narrow streets and exclaimed over the plaques on every side, that recounted the melancholy history of 1665, when two-thirds of the villagers succumbed to disease. A little girl with golden curls hanging down her back found us resting in the shade of an elm, and brought us spring water in a dipper made of tin.

Two hours out of Bakewell, we found ourselves ascending the Hucklow road, where we intended to rest a while among the standing-stones. The country fell sheer away on either side of our cart-track, in much the fashion of Nate’s promised “abbesses.” Cassandra had given over her expressions of delight at every turning, and was now gripping the sides of the swaying trap as though her very life depended upon it. She had suffered one carriage overturning two years since, and the experience did not rest lightly with her; frequent headaches from a considerable knock on the head were the fruit of disaster, and a consequent anxiety each time she trusted herself to an unknown conveyance and driver.

“You might as well get down, my dear, and walk,” I suggested. “I shall do the same. We should both benefit from the exercise, and the horse from the lightened load. You there! Driver! Pull up your horse!”

Nate turned his head around and stared at me. “Tha’s niver askin’ to halt the beast when he’s strainin’ up sich a hill? Tha’s a woman, for ye. Bide bit, till tha’s at the top.”

He had no sooner uttered the words, than the report of a gun set the horse to plunging in its harness. The frightened animal neighed wildly and attempted to bolt — Cassandra screamed, and clutched with both hands at my arm — Nate swore aloud, and dropped the reins to seize his antique blunderbuss — at which the horse, being given its head, plunged forward with a great lurch, spilling Cassandra and me backwards over the pony trap’s seat, along with a quantity of sunshades, novels, sketchbooks, and lap-robes.

The hamper of food, mercifully enough, remained within the equipage.

I tumbled down upon the stony roadbed, felt my head strike an inconvenient outcropping, and struggled to my feet. I looked for Cassandra — espied her bewildered countenance, and reached out my hand — when a shouted halloo from the road ahead drew both our heads around.

A man on horseback, his face masked in a scarf of India cotton, his hat-brim pulled low, was fixed at the head of Nate’s horse with a pistol raised. Nate himself was braced in the pony trap’s seat, his unwieldy weapon levelled upon the highwayman; and the two appeared to have achieved an impasse. I considered whether the wisest course might not be to run — when Cassandra observed, in a voice only barely discomposed, “What sort of highwayman plies his trade in broad daylight, Jane? The fool might be discovered by anyone along the Hucklow road.”

“True enough,” I murmured, and took a step forward.

The highwayman’s eyes shifted slightly from our driver’s wall-eyed glare to my own flushed cheeks, my disarranged sunbonnet. I untied the strings of my leghorn straw and removed it. I took a moment to smooth my hair. And felt Cassandra approaching slowly behind me.

I enquired: “What do you mean, sirrah, by incommoding us in this dreadful fashion?”

“No incommoding meant, and I’m sure, only I did need so as to halt yer trap,” he promptly replied. “I’m under orders to fetch that there book as you carried away from Penfolds Hall yesterday, and I’m obliged to keep you here until you do give it up.”

“The stillroom book? You must be mad! Who are you?” I took a step closer, thinking swiftly of the quarto volume secreted under my mattress.

“Who I be makes no matter, miss,” the highwayman replied. “I’ll be taking that book now.”

“I haven’t got it,” I retorted stoutly. “I gave it into the keeping of Sir James Villiers, the Bakewell Justice — but perhaps you are already acquainted with him.”

“Not so’s to speak to,” the ruffian replied equably. “You wouldn’t be spinning me a falsehood, miss?”

“My sister will tell you the same,” I replied, with what I thought was admirable evasion.

Cassandra nodded vigorously.

The highwayman relaxed his vigilance a trifle, in consideration of our veracity; and without a second’s hesitation, Nate fired his blunderbuss full at the fellow’s head.

The shot went wide — the gun’s recoil knocked Nate backwards into the body of the trap — the highwayman’s horse reared, and tossed him neatly to the ground; and the man went skittering down the side of the Hucklow road, bouncing and cursing and tumbling with a fearful force until he fetched up against a large boulder some thirty feet below. He lay, inert, while Cassandra assisted the faithful Nate out of the body of the trap.