The Lost Garden (The Purchas Family Series Book 5)

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  As they emerged from the main gate of Chevenham House a confused noise she had been hearing explained itself as one enormous traffic block, with frightened drivers shouting angrily at each other, the scream of wheel locked against wheel, and the startled neighing of horses. It seemed to take for ever for the carriage to edge its way out into the stream of carriages and turn right, towards the West.

  ‘It will be better when we are out of town,’ Giles said again.

  ‘Where does Mrs Jones live?’

  ‘Lord knows! I certainly don’t. Did you really think I was out scouring the streets for her? Not very flattering to me, your affianced husband, that you should insist on a chaperone, and in such an emergency.’

  ‘But, Giles!’ She was caught in her own device. This was not at all the moment to tell him she did not mean to marry him. What should she do? To travel on with him would commit her beyond recall, but she knew him well enough now to be certain that nothing she said would shift him. Try and escape? It would be both dangerous and useless to try to leave the carriage as it pushed its way through this mass of impatient traffic. Giles would prevent her, and be alerted. She must wait until they stopped for the night, then seize the first chance to escape him and make her own way to Sophie. The fog that made it impossible now might make it easier then.

  She had hardly any money. The thought struck her like a blow. She had asked Frances Winterton for a loan only that morning and Frances had laughed and said she had not a feather to fly with herself. She had meant to ask Giles, once more, in the course of the journey, for some of the money she was sure he owed her, but that was impossible now, like everything else. Hopeless. All hopeless. She felt the inner fog close round her, thick as the one outside. Give in? Let Giles take her over? If she let him have his own way he would be a tolerant enough sort of husband. She would never have to make up her mind about anything important again. She would never have the chance. He would not only take her over, he would take her poetry too. That was a stiffening thought.

  ‘You’re very quiet, Carrie. Not in the dumps again, I hope?’

  ‘Just thinking.’ If she really meant to escape from him, she must not give him any idea that she was not his obedient companion. ‘About the poem,’ she went on. ‘About a new hero for it. Have you thought of anyone?’

  ‘A foreigner perhaps? The Czar? He would make a striking figure, after all.’

  ‘No. It must be an Englishman. I am sure that was what Tremadoc intended.’ Keeping the discussion going with half her mind, she was beginning to wonder just what route they were taking. It was hard to tell in the fog, but she had taken the west road often enough to visit friends who had country places along it and this did not feel right to her. The carriage was off the stones now and the traffic was thinner as they wound their way along country lanes.

  The fog was thinner too. ‘Gracious!’ she exclaimed. ‘Isn’t that Paddington Green? Giles, where are you taking me?’

  He took her hand. ‘Where my heart tells me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Instinct made her let her hand lie passive in his.

  He pressed it a little. ‘I’d not meant to tell you so soon, but you are too acute for me, little puss. I had quite forgotten that you had travelled this road before. I promise I’ll make a better companion, and a better husband too, than Tremadoc did.’

  ‘Tremadoc? You can’t mean…?’

  ‘We’re off to Gretna, love. But this time with the full consent of your father and mother. We have been anxious about you — putting our heads together to decide what’s best for you, and this is our answer. Since you and I cannot properly be married so soon in town, we are off on a romantic pilgrimage to Gretna. It will merely enhance the whole touching story of our marriage, the poet’s widow and his publisher, her long-time friend and foster brother. No need to fret. We will be forgiven for being perhaps a little hasty. I have dropped a word in certain quarters. The world will understand that you need me at your side.’

  He sounded enormously pleased with himself, and it was hard to let her hand lie meek in his.

  ‘But Sophie?’ she ventured.

  ‘Has made her bed and must lie on it. Oh!’ Carelessly. ‘If you like, we might give her a look in on our way back from Gretna. I know I shall want to prolong our honeymoon.’

  ‘Will you, Giles?’ At all costs, she must keep him talking, keep him sure of her.

  ‘You know I will!’ His hand squeezed hers again.

  Why was she so sure that he meant none of it? That, in fact, he did not love her at all?

  ‘You really have my mother’s permission?’ She felt his hand twitch on hers.

  ‘And your father’s too. What a woman your mother is! One in a million. And so kind! So caring about you, Carrie! She’s been so anxious for you, while you’ve not been yourself. We’ll make it all up to her when we get back to London and set up housekeeping. She’ll live with us, of course.’

  ‘Will she?’ She thought she was beginning to see it all now. This elopement was her mother’s idea. Had she perhaps decided that it had been a mistake to import her into Chevenham House? That she could bring the Duke round her thumb more easily if she was alone with him? Or had Giles become too obviously devoted to her? Had she perhaps tried to make the Duke jealous and decided it would not work? Or was she even planning a new menage à trois, with herself and Giles?

  ‘Of course she will! We’ll be the talk of the town, we happy three.’ He laughed, a little self-consciously. ‘It was she who suggested the Czar as our new hero.’

  ‘Was it?’ If Caroline had had any doubts left about her predicament this would have settled them. At all costs, she must escape from him before night. But the fog had been lifting steadily since they left the Thames valley and the carriage was travelling faster. She must wait until they stopped for the night and hope for a chance to slip away, find help, hide.

  But who would help her? If she managed to give Giles the slip, it would be without money, without baggage. I am afraid, she thought, I am most horribly afraid.

  ‘You’re tired, child.’ Giles’ voice roused her. ‘Not long now, my patient puss. I like your confidence in me! No questions! No doubts! We are to stay tonight with old friends of your mother’s,’ he went on carelessly. ‘She thought it would be more eligible than a public inn.’

  ‘You and she have thought of everything. Do I know them?’

  ‘I think not. Drummond, the name is. She knew them abroad, I believe, when she was quite a girl. They have a house near Colney Heath. They live very quietly, she says, but will be delighted to see us.’

  ‘They are expecting us?’ Her thoughts were racing. If they were to stay in a private house, could she not afford to let the night pass before she tried to escape? It would mean that she was farther from London, when she did get away from Giles, but it would also give her more time to make him sure of her. And she had heard that the farther you got from London, the kinder people were.

  ‘I’m so tired, Giles, so very tired.’ She made herself slump a little against him. ‘It’s all been such a shock.’

  ‘Poor little Carrie. A happy one, of course.’ He was in no doubt of it. ‘I am sure Mr and Mrs Drummond will understand if you wish to go straight to bed when we get there.’

  ‘Oh, I’d like that, if they did not think me too rude.’

  ‘I shall explain to them.’ She thought that this suited his book very well and wondered just what he and his mother had told the Drummonds.

  They were a kind, middle-aged couple, full of sympathy for Caroline and loving questions about Frances Winterton.

  ‘Only to think of her remembering us after all this time,’ said Mrs Drummond over and over again as she took Caroline up to the comfortable bedroom that had been made ready for her. ‘Of course you must rest if that is what you wish. Such a romantic journey as you are on, you naturally wish all your strength for its happy conclusion.’ She insisted on helping Caroline to bed, with a stream of comment on everything from the silve
r-backed hairbrushes the Duchess had given her to her extreme thinness. ‘I vow you’ll be plumper and pinker in the cheek when you visit us on your way back from Gretna,’ she said at last, leaving Caroline in peace to make herself eat some of the luxurious supper that was sent up to her.

  She had dismissed all thoughts of escape from here when she saw how lonely the house was, set well outside a tiny village some distance from the Great North Road. As she drifted off to exhausted sleep her mind was still puzzling over the problem that had been with her all day. If she was right in thinking that Giles was not in the least in love with her, but, in fact, infatuated with her mother, why in the world was he so set on marrying her?

  She woke to country silence, a fine morning and a new sense of determination. Something about Mrs Drummond’s coy comments the night before had brought home to her the full horror of marriage with Giles. Today, at whatever risk, she was going to get away from him.

  She joined the party at breakfast, smiled and blushed at their innuendoes, and let Mrs Drummond tell her that she must quite long for the journey’s end. Leaning on Giles’ arm as he led her out to the carriage, she asked casually how far they were going today. If only he would mention where he planned to stop for lunch and the night she would have some basis for planning.

  But he merely laughed, and pressed her arm, and told her he was quite as anxious to get to Gretna as she could be. He had caught a hint of the Drummonds’ ogling vulgarity and she thought that he had always been someone who took his tone from his surroundings.

  Her long night’s sleep had done her good. She leaned forward to look out of the carriage window.

  ‘Oh, look, Giles, wild daffodils! How pretty! I wish we could stop.’ They had just passed through a small village and she had a quick, wild idea of asking to pick them and running away from him.

  ‘Nonsense, Carrie,’ he said.

  She subsided into silence, but went on gazing out of the window, enjoying the green haze along the hedgerows that spoke of spring and watching eagerly for signposts that might tell her where they were.

  She saw one at last pointing down a narrow tree-lined lane: Lower Hallam, it read, Three Miles.

  Hallam? The name was familiar. Of course. It was where Mattingley’s country house was. She remembered the last time she had seen him. He had been summoned home, he had said, to Hallam, and Giles had said something sneering about being lucky to have a country estate. Would Giles remember? Had he seen the signpost? And was she really thinking of trying to get away and going to Mattingley for help?

  Not Mattingley. Her friend John Gerard. If only they really were two people. If she did manage to get away, and turned to Mattingley for help, would he feel in honour bound to propose to her again? Well, if he did, she could but refuse him. Her hands were hard fists in her lap. She would ask him to send her to Sophie. It was comfortable to know how entirely she could trust him to do what she asked.

  But first she must get to Hallam.

  ‘What time is it, Giles? We’ve been driving for ever! Could we not stop for a nuncheon at the next likely inn we see? I really need to stop.’ She put a faint tremor into her voice.

  ‘Oh, Carrie!’ He sounded merely irritated. ‘It’s early yet! Must you?’

  ‘Please, Giles?’

  ‘Oh, very well, but it will make a long afternoon.’ He leaned out to tell the coachman to look out for the next inn. ‘God knows what we’ll get to eat! I had planned to get much farther, to an inn the Drummonds recommended. Just my luck to get a coachman who doesn’t know the road! I can’t think why your mother could not persuade the Duke to lend us one of the carriages that stand idle at Chevenham House. It would have given us consequence!’

  ‘And made us notorious,’ said Caroline. And thought that that was just what he wished. But in fact she too had been bitterly disappointed that they had not used one of the Chevenham carriages. She was good friends with all the inmates of the stable yard and thought they would have helped her. ‘Look,’ she pointed. ‘There’s a church tower on the hill ahead. It looks like a thriving little town. Do ask the boy what it is?’

  The boy, questioned, said it was Upper Hallam, and, yes, he thought there was a good enough sort of inn, though it was not a post house.

  ‘Please, Giles?’ Caroline had held her breath to see if the name Hallam suggested anything to Giles, but apparently it did not.

  ‘Oh, very well then, but upon your own head be it if the food’s uneatable.’ His tone of elaborate patience suggested to her that he yielded on small points because he did not intend to do so on important ones.

  The Hallam Arms was on the far side of the village green from the main road and Caroline’s hopes leaped up as the carriage edged its way through a narrow gate into the yard. The old-fashioned, rambling inn with its thatched roof and bits of Tudor beaming seemed to run straight out into the countryside. As Giles helped her down from the carriage she looked beyond barns to a field with sheep and then a little wood, with a footpath and stile.

  Looking eagerly about her, she saw a couple of carts and a neat, light gig, whose owners must presumably be eating in the inn. Could she persuade one of them to give her a lift to Hallam House? Or could she make Giles think she had done so, and walk there? How long would he go on looking for her? And, most important of all, would he remember Mattingley’s connection with Hallam?

  The landlady had come out into the yard, smiling effusively at the sight of gentry. She promised Giles as neat a nuncheon as he could wish for, and bent her head to Caroline’s shyly whispered request.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ She pointed. ‘Through the yard and down the garden. You can’t miss.’

  A path led past the privy to a gate on to the sheep field and Caroline felt a moment’s wild temptation to run for it there and then. But it would be madness. She must eat first, and try to find out how the land lay without alerting Giles. It was a pity the landlady had not shown her the way, and laid herself open to questioning, but there it was.

  Emerging from the privy, she saw a boy whistling his way towards her across the sheep-field. Here was opportunity. She walked towards him, pulling on her gloves.

  ‘A fine morning.’ She smiled at him. ‘Can you tell me where Hallam House lies?’

  ‘Squire Mattingley’s place?’ Her heart leapt up as the boy pointed back towards the wood. ‘Back there a piece. Longer by road, a course.’ His accent was so thick and strange that it was hard to understand.

  ‘How far on foot?’

  ‘I dunno.’ He scratched his head and stared at her, overwhelmed by her elegance. ‘I never bin there. Quite a way, I reckon.’ He thought about it, eager to please. ‘My ma used to work there,’ he offered. ‘Left early, she did, when she come home.’

  She dared not delay longer. Pausing to pick a few primroses, she thought she had learned a good ideal. She knew that Hallam House was within a long walk, and which way to start. She walked back up the garden, noticing that none of the inn’s public rooms seemed to look out on it.

  Back in the yard, she found Giles standing in the inn doorway. ‘You took long enough.’ Impatiently.

  ‘I picked you a buttonhole.’ She reached up to tuck the primroses into his coat. Another gig had just driven into the yard and its burly owner had thrown the reins to a lounging boy and strode past them into the inn, calling for ale.

  ‘Touching. We’re to have a pig’s face and pickles,’ he told her. ‘What that will do to my digestion!’

  ‘Oh, Giles, do you have a digestion?’

  ‘After all those years in India.’ He had forgotten the scold he meant to give her for keeping him waiting.

  ‘I’d like to wash my hands and make myself tidy,’ she said as they moved into the dark interior of the inn. ‘Our first meal together.’ She managed to sound almost as coy as Mrs Drummond.

  It earned her a smile. ‘Don’t be long then. The girl will take you.’ He snapped his fingers at an aproned maid. ‘And a pint of porter for me,’ he added.

&nb
sp; To her surprised delight, the girl led her not upstairs but down a long, dark corridor towards the back of the house. Passing a door open on to the yard, she saw a man climbing into the gig that had been parked there when they arrived. He was in neat black, a country lawyer, perhaps, or a doctor. If only she could have asked his help.

  Perhaps he could help her yet. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked the girl.

  ‘Mr Sanders? He’s the bailiff, mum.’ She opened a door and showed Caroline into a neat little bedroom overlooking the garden. Pouring water from jug into basin, she explained further. ‘Not from Hallam; t’other way.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Not Hallam. Caroline breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I can find my own way back,’ she said. ‘Just look at my hair!’ She pulled out the pins and let it fall round her face. ‘Tell the gentleman I won’t be more than five minutes.’

  ‘Very good, mum.’ The girl curtsied and left her alone.

  Not a moment to lose. She bundled her hair up anyhow, opened her reticule and got out the pencil and paper she always carried to note down ideas for The Downfall of Bonaparte.

  ‘I’m sorry, Giles,’ she wrote quickly. ‘I find I cannot face another trip to Gretna. A kind man is giving me a lift in his gig. I am going back to London, to my mother. Forgive me.’

  The less she said, the better. She folded the note, wrote Mr Comfrey on it and put it on the washstand. Then she threw up the sash window and climbed out into the garden, praying that she was right and it was not overlooked by the public rooms.

  Down the path, through the gate, across the field. Her shoulders stiff with the expectation of Giles’ angry shout. It did not come. Had he perhaps been given his pint of porter?

  The stile was high, and she hitched up her petticoats ruthlessly to climb it and wished she was wearing stouter shoes. Once into the wood, she let herself look back and saw with joy that the inn was no longer visible. She took a deep breath and started down the narrow, muddy path.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ‘She’s gone where?’ Calling early at Chevenham House, Mattingley had insisted on seeing Frances Winterton.