A Conformable Wife: A Regency Romance with a spirited heroine

by Alice Chetwynd Ley

  He gave an answering chuckle. “Perhaps so. But don’t depend upon it when I come to know you better. My sister tells me I have a caustic tongue at times.”

  So he means to know me better, thought Henrietta. Aloud she said, “How fortunate that you warned me! Else my sensibilities must have been completely overset.”

  “I wonder?” He smiled down at her. “I have a feeling that you’d stand up to more Turkish treatment than I’m ever likely to mete out, ma’am.”

  “So you fancy you can read my character, do you, in spite of our short acquaintance?”

  “Well, perhaps I’m cheating a little,” he admitted, with another sidelong glance. “You see, Almeria has told me a great deal about you already.”

  “Oh, dear! That quite casts me down.”

  “It need not. She has a very high opinion of you.”

  “And so have I of her loyalty, for she must have suppressed some of the truth to have given you a favourable impression,” said Henrietta, laughing once more. “But see, here is the castle.”

  They had begun to descend the hill leading to the hamlet of Farleigh. The castle stood on their left. Lying among the rolling Somerset hills, the ivy-covered walls of the ruin stood picturesquely on an area of level ground overhanging a gulley through which a busy stream ran to a mill a short distance down the valley. Although little remained of the great hall and most of the main buildings, the gatehouse, close to the steep hill, stood whole and impressive. Behind it rose a great tower, still as high as when it had been built more than four hundred years before. The curtain wall that surrounded the ruins was broken only by the priest’s house, still complete, which hid the fourteenth-century chapel from those outside. They drew rein before the fine gatehouse emblazoned with a coat of arms.

  “That’s the Hungerford crest, I suppose,” he said.

  “Yes, but the castle passed from their hands many years ago. I believe it’s now in the possession of a family named Houlton.”

  They rode through the gateway and dismounted, leaving their horses to crop at the grass growing in the outer court.

  “It’s certainly a magnificent pile, but in a sadly ruinous state,” remarked Aldwyn, looking interestedly about him. “Shall we walk round a little, or are you too tired, Miss Melville?”

  “Goodness, I hope I am not such a poor creature as to be overset by a gentle ride of three miles!” exclaimed Henrietta. “Where would you like to start, Mr. Aldwyn? Perhaps you would care to look into the chapel first, as it’s near at hand. There are some very fine tombs there where generations of the Hungerfords, dating from the fourteenth century are buried.”

  “This was once the parish church,” Henrietta explained, as they descended the short flight of steps that took them into the chapel. “But when Sir Walter Hungerford constructed the outer court in the fifteenth century, he decided to include the church and convert it for his own use as the family chapel.”

  They lingered for a time looking round the interior before moving to an arch that led into a small chantry with a low-pitched roof where the Hungerford tombs stood.

  “This is the tomb of Sir Thomas, builder of the castle,” said Henrietta, pausing by a crypt. “I can’t help but feel that his lady has more comfort from that cushion under her head than he does from the helm on which he’s resting, even though both are carved in stone. But pray don’t regard my nonsense! Do you not think it very fine?”

  He agreed, and they were about to pass on to inspect another, when a piercing scream from outside suddenly shattered the surrounding peace.

  “Heavens, whatever was that?” cried Henrietta.

  He made no answer, but ran back into the courtyard. She followed close at his heels.

  They stood for a moment, uncertain. One of the horses threw up its head and whickered; otherwise they heard no sound.

  “I think the scream came from this direction,” said Aldwyn, walking rapidly toward a ruined section of the wall on their left. “It was high pitched — a child’s or a female’s, I would think. Oh!”

  He broke into a run, and Henrietta followed as fast as she could over the piles of broken masonry.

  When she reached his side, he was bending over the recumbent figure of a fair-haired boy, about ten years old. She recognised the child at once.

  “Oh, dear God! It’s Ben Florey! Is he — surely he can’t be —”

  “No, no,” said Aldwyn reassuringly. “Stunned, merely. I dare say he’ll be round in a few moments. Yes, here he comes.”

  The boy opened his eyes, blinked, shook his head, and sat up, staring at them dazedly. Then he attempted to struggle to his feet.

  “Steady on,” advised Aldwyn, putting an arm about the child to assist him. Then, seeing the boy wince as he started to put his left foot to the ground, “Hm, hurt your foot, have you? Sit down again, and I’ll take a look at it.”

  Aldwyn gently removed the shoe and stocking to examine the extent of the injury. He smiled approvingly as he noticed the child bravely suppress a second wince.

  “Nothing serious; a sprain, I’d say. You know the lad, do you, Miss Melville?”

  “Yes, he’s the youngest son of our neighbour, Mr. William Florey. Poor Ben, you must be feeling all on end! How did you come to such a grief?”

  “I took a tumble, Miss Melville, when I was climbing that curst wall,” answered Ben, who, though pale, was now recovering rapidly from his swoon. “Regular mutton headed thing to do, seeing that I’m forever climbing trees! I remember falling, then knocking my head on the ground, then nothing else until I saw you and this gentleman bending over me. Must’ve swooned, I s’pose — just like a silly girl!” he added, in disgust.

  “No need to be ashamed on that account,” Aldwyn reassured him. “I’ve seen plenty of soldiers knocked out cold in similar circumstances.”

  “I say, sir, are you a military man?” demanded Ben eagerly, forgetting his troubles in the excitement of this discovery.

  “I should perhaps introduce you to Mr. Aldwyn,” put in Henrietta at this juncture. “He was until lately a major in the Duke of Wellington’s forces.”

  “That’s famous! Should I call you Major Aldwyn, sir?”

  Aldwyn shook his head. “I renounced the military title when I quitted the army. But I think we’d best be getting you home, young fellow. How did you come here; did you ride?”

  “My pony’s cast a shoe and the blacksmith’s too busy to see to it until this afternoon,” explained Ben. “Well, it seemed a pity to waste a capital sort of morning like this, sir, so I thought I’d hoof it to the castle — that is to say, walk it, Mr. Aldwyn,” he amended, with the wary glance of one who is frequently being reprimanded for his use of slang.

  “Well, it’s plain that you won’t be returning on foot,” replied Aldwyn, with a grin. “I fear, Miss Melville, that we must postpone our tour of the castle until some future occasion. I’ll take our young friend up on my horse, and we’ll accompany him home.”

  “Yes, indeed we must,” Henrietta agreed. “Do you feel more the thing now, Ben?”

  “Right as a trivet, ma’am! But I’m sorry to be giving you and Mr. Aldwyn so much trouble,” said Ben politely. “If you wouldn’t object to lending me your arm, sir, so’s I can get up, I dare say I can hop over to the horses.”

  “Possibly, but I don’t propose to put it to the test,” said Aldwyn with a laugh. “There’s any amount of loose masonry hereabouts, and we don’t want you spraining the other ankle, do we?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he took the boy up easily into his arms, carried him over to the waiting horses, and lifted him to the back of his own animal.

  Then he turned to assist Henrietta to mount, before swinging himself into the saddle.

  “I say, sir, this is a sweet goer!” exclaimed Ben, when they had covered a few hundred yards. “What do you call him?”

  “Pericles. Yes, he gets over ground readily enough.”

  “Pericles?” echoed Ben in tones of disgust. “Why, wasn�
�t he one of those Greek chaps?”

  “I am gratified to see that your classical education has not been wholly neglected,” said Aldwyn.

  “No fear of that, sir, with old Master Finnemore, regular Tartar that he is! But I must say, Mr. Aldwyn, it seems an odd sort of name to give a horse. Though I don’t mean to be impertinent,” he added, glancing warily at his companion.

  “Well, perhaps it is an odd name, but I’m possessed of a somewhat odd sense of humour.”

  He glanced at Henrietta as he answered, and they shared a smile. She reflected that he seemed to have an easy way with the boy, considering his bachelor state. Then she remembered that he had several young nephews, and must be quite used to children.

  They rode on in silence for a time, until Ben suddenly asked Henrietta how long it would take for his ankle to recover.

  “It depends on how severe the sprain may be,” she replied. “But I dare say you’ll be able to use it by the end of the week.”

  To one of Ben’s restless temperament, this seemed like a life sentence. His expression grew glum.

  “Not till then? Oh, Lud, and Father was to take me over to the Limpley stables tomorrow! He’s to buy a new hunter, and I wouldn’t miss it for anything! This is the most curst thing!”

  “I shouldn’t let yourself get cast into a flat despair yet,” consoled Aldwyn. “If your father’s to drive there, you know, I expect you can still accompany him.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” agreed Ben, his face brightening. “I could hobble around with a stick or something, I dare say. But it’ll be pretty flat at home for the rest of the time.”

  “You must persuade your sister Anna to play some indoor games with you,” suggested Henrietta. “That will soon pass the time away.”

  “Anna — not she! She spends all her time reading trashy novels. At least Mama says they are trashy, though I saw her reading one of them herself the other morning, when Anna had gone out. Mama said it was to make sure such matter was fit for Anna to read, but I’m not so sure about that.”

  Henrietta had hard work not to laugh at this, and from a quick glance at Julian Aldwyn, she saw that he was experiencing a similar difficulty. He turned the subject with some adroitness, however, and the rest of the journey was accomplished without the emergence of any further insights into the foibles of the Florey family.

  Chapter V

  Anna Florey was curled up on the window seat of the front parlour in Maxtead House, her fair head bowed earnestly over a copy of Miss Frances Burney’s novel Evelina. At first she had not been anxious to read the book, which had been handed to her by her mama with the recommendation that, if she must waste her time in reading novels, she might as well choose one with a high moral tone. But a lack of other reading matter had forced her to make the attempt, and now she was deep into the story, her blue eyes devouring every word of the affecting scene set out before her.

  If only she could have been Evelina, she thought wistfully, and had the good fortune to meet such a handsome, elegant, charming gentleman as Lord Orville — and one with such striking nobility of character! Of course, one would need to go to far-off London and enter polite society to meet such a gentleman, for Anna was sure there were none in Somerset. She lowered the book a few inches and let her gaze wander as she passed in rapid review all the single young gentlemen of the immediate neighbourhood.

  They were mostly schoolboys like Jack Bovill, she reflected scornfully, either that, or boring older gentlemen of the sporting fraternity who hunted or went shooting with Papa. They always greeted her heartily, if they deigned to notice her at all, with no trace of the romantic approach due a heroine. For fifteen-year-old Anna saw herself as the heroine of a romance, in spite of the determined efforts of the rest of the world to treat her as a very ordinary schoolgirl. She knew that she was a trifle too plump for a truly romantic heroine, but she had strong hopes that this was only puppy fat, as Nurse said, and that time would remove it. Had not her sister Catherine become slim and willowy in her seventeenth year, just before Mama had taken her to London for her come-out? And was Katie not now married to a dashing baronet, and quite one of the toasts of the town — or so Mama said. For the rest, Anna was aware that she was tolerably pleasing to look at, with her golden curls, deep blue eyes, and, looking earnestly in her mirror, a mouth that she would sometimes — but this was a great secret — consider kissable.

  She sighed deeply. It was a melancholy fact that life was not nearly so exciting as one hoped it might be, so that there was really nothing else to be done but to seek vicarious thrills between the covers of a novel. The summer holidays were almost over, and she had never once fallen into the smallest adventure or met anyone in the least way interesting; it was enough to sink her in mortification. In little more than a week, she would return to Bath, immured in the stultifying, correct atmosphere of Miss Mynford’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies, in Queen Square. Although, as a senior student, she had many privileges, and she and her chosen friends often had good times there, she indulged herself for the moment in imagining the seminary as nothing better than a prison. How absurd that she should remain there for another whole year! She would speak to Mama about it.

  Having made this momentous decision, she was about to return to her book when she heard the sound of horses on the drive. She looked out of the window and saw two riders approaching. She immediately recognized the familiar riding habit of Miss Melville. But the other… She looked again, this time with a quickly caught breath and a leaping heartbeat. The other was the hero of her dreams!

  Tall, elegant, sitting his horse with masterly ease in spite of the encumbrance of — Ben, of all people! What in the world was he doing in such an enviable situation? If only it could have been herself!

  Casting Miss Burney’s masterpiece aside, Anna made her way into the hall just in time to see the newcomers admitted by a footman and greeted by her mother, who had chanced to be passing through the hall at that moment.

  Inured to her young son’s mishaps by years of experience, Mrs. Florey made no fuss, but summoned the family nurse to bear Ben off and deal with his injury. She then invited his rescuers into the parlour and sent for Mr. Florey to join them.

  It was some time before Anna found herself being presented, and then the business was accomplished in what, she thought indignantly, was the shabbiest fashion.

  “Oh, this is my daughter Anna, Mr. Aldwyn,” Mrs. Florey said, carelessly. She invited the visitors to be seated. Then, in a sharper tone to Anna, “Come, girl, don’t they teach you how to make a curtsey at that school of yours? Pray, don’t just stand there with your mouth open, but mind your manners!”

  Glancing at the now fiery face of the schoolgirl, Aldwyn felt a pang of compassion. Why were mothers so often maladroit in their dealings with their adolescent offspring? To make up for the girl’s obvious discomfort, he executed his most graceful bow as he pleasantly made her acquaintance. Anna bestowed a grateful look upon him before seating herself in a chair opposite his so that she might look her fill at him.

  She could not be sure that he was precisely like Lord Orville in looks, of course, for the author of Evelina had left her readers with no very clear impression of her hero’s appearance. Mr. Aldwyn had crisply curling dark hair, an interestingly tanned face, which somehow had a look of strength, and deep brown eyes. A thrill ran through her as she encountered a glance from them. From that moment, Lord Orville relinquished his previous hold upon her imagination, stepping back into the shadowy pages of fiction from which she had summoned him. If she were to meet the counterpart of Evelina’s suitor tomorrow, she told herself scornfully, she would pay no heed to him at all.

  But how to interest this demi-god in someone as young and inexperienced as herself? As she listened to the account of Ben’s accident, she railed against fate. If only she had been climbing among the castle ruins and come to grief instead of Ben, then she would have been lifted in his arms and carried home on his horse. But, of course, she would nev
er have been permitted in the first place to wander off alone on foot farther than the quarter of a mile to the village. It really was too bad that boys were allowed so much more freedom than their sisters.

  Her thoughts were interrupted at this point by a further remark from her mama, which again cast her into confusion.

  “Anna, I wish you will not stare so! Upon my word, our visitors will be setting you down as half-witted.”

  It was Miss Melville who came to her rescue this time, as Mr. Aldwyn was deep in conversation with Papa.

  “On the contrary, I know Anna to be very quick witted,” said Henrietta with a laugh. “Do you recall how we used to play at charades when your sister Catherine and my own sister Pamela were still at home? You were nearly always the first to guess.”

  “She can be sharp enough when she chooses,” conceded Mrs. Florey, bestowing a relenting smile on her offspring before turning to join in the gentlemen’s conversation.

  “Oh, that all seems so long ago,” Anna replied with an adult air. “More than a year. I was quite a little girl then.”

  “I suppose so. You are fast becoming a young lady. When do you return to school? But how stupid of me!” Henrietta added contritely. “I know I should never ask that question; it seems to make the holidays shorter, somehow.”

  “That is what I like about you,” declared Anna, with the candour permissible among lifelong acquaintances. “You always know how a girl feels about such things.”

  “It would be strange if I did not, as I’ve once been a girl myself.”

  “Yes, but most grown-up ladies seem to forget that,” said Anna, a shade bitterly. “They are forever expecting one to behave as if — oh, as if one were thirty!”

  “Thirty being the end of the road?” asked Henrietta quizzically. “At half that age, I dare say it may seem so.”