by Jane Ashford
Susan looked distinctly relieved.
“Have his servants arrived to help you?” asked William.
Georgina nodded, and her expression was so wry that Marianne inquired further. “It is his valet,” replied Georgina. “He is…difficult.”
No one but Marianne appeared to find this of interest, or comprehensible. The other three, assured of Ellerton’s improvement, had turned their attention to ordering luncheon. “I understand that the personal attendants of men of fashion are often so,” said Marianne quietly. “Their work requires such fussiness.”
“I think he is simply jealous,” responded Georgina.
“Ah. Not accustomed to interference in his arrangements.” Marianne nodded.
The other was surprised, and grateful, at this ready comprehension. “Exactly. He wishes Baron Ellerton to rely on no one but himself, I think. He seems much attached to him.”
“Perhaps he is a family retainer. I hope you are not finding things too unpleasant?”
“Oh, no.”
“You could, I suppose, leave everything to his servants now.” The look that passed over Georgina’s face at this suggestion made her hurriedly add, “Though I’m sure Baron Ellerton would find that less pleasant.”
“I think we owe him some return, after Susan’s foolishness.” Georgina’s tone was unnatural, and she dropped her eyes.
“Of course.” But Marianne eyed her with new concern. She had been pleased to find that Susan Wyndham had put aside all thoughts of Ellerton after their disastrous adventure. Indeed, she had laughed with the other girl this morning over the ridiculous idea of their rivalry for his attentions, a rivalry that had been wholly the creation of Susan’s imagination. And they had agreed on the unlikelihood of the baron’s being smitten with either of them, Susan because he now seemed much less appealing and Marianne from a more realistic perspective. The latter was discomfited to see signs of attraction in Georgina, whom she had thought so sensible and likable. Marianne’s immediate impulse was to warn her, though she could see that this would not be welcome. She did not wish to let Georgina be hurt. Yet it was obvious that her advice was neither sought nor desired. And speaking might well prevent any future talk on the subject. Undecided, she kept silent.
“Georgina,” said Susan then. “Do you want cold ham or cold beef? I want ham.”
“But I thought we agreed,” began Tony hotly.
“Why not have both?” offered Georgina.
The two young people seemed much struck.
Smiling, William Wyndham came over to join her. “We are in for a feast, I think. They are ordering whatever either of them wants.”
“We’ll make them pay, then,” replied Marianne, and the two exchanged smiles.
“But what can we do for you in town, Georgina?” he continued. “That is why we came, after all.”
“I have all I need just now. I will call on you when necessary.”
“See that you do.”
“How are things in London? Did Aunt Sybil and Lady Bentham take your news well?”
“Grandmama was agog,” laughed William. “I believe she would be here now if there were any means of fitting her bed into a carriage. Do you think she has a tendre for Ellerton?”
Georgina’s answering smile was stiff, and Marianne spoke before William could notice it. “Mama, on the other hand, scarcely heard what I said, I think. But she is happy to have Susan accompany us when we go out.”
“Poor woman,” said William. “She has no idea what she is taking on. But you may count on me to support you.”
The look that William and Marianne exchanged then made Georgina frown thoughtfully.
“Are you coming to the table?” complained Tony. “I’m half-starved.”
“You’re always half-starved,” William retorted, but he turned to usher the ladies to their chairs. “Anyone would think your parents never fed you.”
“I’m an orphan,” responded Tony with mournful dignity, “with no one in the world to watch over me.” His hazel eyes sparkled with reproach.
“Except an immensely rich cousin who dotes on you, from all reports,” laughed William, “and a worshipful older sister.”
“Worshipful!” Tony appeared amazed and revolted. “Someday I shall present you to Amanda, and you will see just how worshipful she is. Why, her husband—”
“I am going to eat,” declared Susan, picking up her fork. She had been seated for some time.
Abandoning his argument, Tony hastened to join her, and they were all soon engrossed in the landlord’s fine cold meats and fruit. Georgina was surprised to enjoy herself, and it was clear that the other four were having a splendid time. Indeed, sitting back to watch them for a moment in the midst of the meal, Georgina felt a pang of envy along with her pleasure in their happiness. They all seemed so carefree, their lively laughter unmarred by concerns more serious than which party they would attend that night. Yet when the time came for them to depart, and she returned to Ellerton’s sickroom, her envy faded at once. Jenkins had at last gone to get some sleep, and Georgina and the baron talked quietly together at intervals. When Ellerton dozed, she read or sewed, and throughout the afternoon she was filled with a warm contentment.
Eleven
The journey back to London was noisy. Susan and Tony couldn’t seem to speak to each other without quarreling. They began on departure from the innyard, disputing the merits of Tony’s mount, and continued through every foot of the ride, bickering over the chance of a shortcut, the probable hour of their arrival home, and a thousand other things. William and Marianne gradually fell back, putting enough distance between them so that they could hear only the constant rhythm of argument, not the specifics.
“They might be brother and sister,” said Marianne with a smile.
“Susan never argued with us,” corrected William. “She commanded, and we obeyed. Or didn’t. And then there was a fearful row. But not like that.” He nodded toward the two ahead. “They seem to be enjoying themselves.”
Marianne agreed, impressed by his perspicacity. “That sounds like my brother. He was always commanding, too, though I seldom listened.” She smiled again. “At least until he married Alicia.”
William smiled back at her. “And then you listened?” he teased.
“Then he stopped being so silly.” They laughed together.
“So you don’t care for commands?” he added.
“Not much.”
William watched her profile as they rode along the grassy lane that Susan and Tony had insisted was a quicker way back to London. Marianne looked resplendent with the sun lighting her red hair to molten copper where it curled from beneath her hat and the lines of her body clear in her deep blue riding habit. William had never met a girl who attracted him more. He wanted at the same time to learn everything about her, and to throw caution to the winds and sweep her into his arms.
Marianne felt his gaze, but did not turn at first. Her own feelings were less certain than William’s. She knew she liked him, and she was intrigued by his air of maturity and assurance. In London, to which her experience of the male sex was generally limited, men seemed either callow and stammering or arrogantly self-assured. Marianne had thought until Lord Robert Devere offered for her that she favored the latter, who most resembled her beloved brother, but now she wasn’t sure. And William was a third sort of man. He had assurance without a trace of arrogance. She turned her head and met his admiring look. Their eyes were nearly the same color, she realized.
Their gaze held for a moment that seemed to stretch far longer. Wordlessly they communicated their special interest, each thrilling to the knowledge that the feeling was mutual. Their surroundings receded into a humming blur.
“William!” called Susan urgently from just ahead. “Hurry. There’s a storm coming.”
Both William and Marianne started visibly and
turned to her. Susan and Tony had pulled up and were much closer than before, though they didn’t appear to have noticed anything unusual. Susan was motioning them forward. “Come on!”
Glancing up, they saw at once that she was correct. As they talked, a line of dark clouds had raced in from the east, and a heavy shower was imminent. When Susan saw that they understood, she immediately turned her horse and kicked it into a gallop, hoping to outrun the rain. Tony was hot on her heels.
“We won’t make it,” judged William.
Marianne was looking for shelter. “No.”
“And they led us into this cursed lane where there are no houses at all.”
She nodded, then abruptly laughed. “I’ll race you.” And before he could reply, she was off.
William lost a valuable moment looking after her. Then he recovered and set his heels to his mount.
The four of them thundered down the empty lane, Susan and Tony well to the front, Marianne next, and William gaining on her. Susan’s laughter floated back over the grass, and when Marianne glanced over her shoulder, she was grinning.
A bolt of lightning made them urge their horses on, and the animals needed no further encouragement when thunder followed. But their speed was in the end to no avail, for they hadn’t reached the end of the lane when the skies opened. A torrent poured down, soaking them in the first minute. The rain fell so heavily that it seemed there was no space between drops, and it was difficult to see more than a few feet ahead. Shocked by the sudden onslaught, Marianne slowed her horse to a walk, and William soon drew up alongside. Susan and Tony, invisible in the storm, apparently continued to gallop, for their excited whoops gradually faded with distance.
Marianne breathed in gasps. The rain pounded at them, and it had started so abruptly that she was still breathless with the shock. She glanced at William; huge raindrops were striking the top of his head so violently that they sent up tiny circles of spray, and water was pouring down his face so that he had to keep blinking and sputtering. She tipped her head a little more forward to better take advantage of her hat brim and to hide a giggle. “Where is your hat?”
“What?” The roar of the storm kept him from hearing.
“Your hat!”
“Oh. Gone. This confounded rain knocked it into the ditch, and I decided it wasn’t worth getting down.” He stopped, coughing, then added, “We’ve got to get out of this.”
Marianne merely nodded. She found it difficult to converse at a shout.
William kicked his mount to a reluctant trot, and they moved forward more rapidly again. Susan and Tony had disappeared.
It was nearly impossible to see anything in the heavy downpour. Indeed, at moments they feared to stray off the ill-marked lane. But occasionally the rain seemed to part like a curtain and afford glimpses of the country. In one of these, Marianne saw something. “Look there!” she shouted, pointing. But by the time William had turned, the view was obscured again. “I saw a building,” insisted the girl. “Off that way, perhaps twenty yards.”
“Are you sure?” cried William.
At Marianne’s decisive nod, he turned his horse’s head to follow hers. She negotiated the shallow ditch at the side of the road and began to push through the bushes beyond. At any other time she would have avoided the dripping vegetation, but she couldn’t get any wetter. Almost at once, they came to a narrow path, just wide enough for a farm cart, and in a short time reached a small, dilapidated barn at the edge of a field.
William jumped down and tried the door, which, mercifully, was unlatched. He pushed it wide, and Marianne rode in, William leading his mount just behind. Inside, it was musty but dry. Marianne slid from her saddle and gave a great sigh of relief. It was wonderful to be out of the rain. Standing beneath a roof, listening to it pounding above, filled her with an exquisite feeling of coziness, despite her soaked garments.
William led their horses to the far corner of the barn, where a few wisps of hay tempted them. “No use rubbing them down,” he concluded. “We’ll be going on soon.”
Marianne unpinned her hat and pulled it off, a spray of droplets fanning out from the feather that had once adorned it and now drooped soddenly along the brim. She shook her head, and her red hair escaped its binding and fanned out across her shoulders, part drenched and part dry where it had been protected by the bonnet.
William had to stifle a gasp. With her radiant hair all down around her face, Marianne was more beautiful than ever.
Unaware of his reaction, she put the hat down and bent to try to wring the water from her skirt. The long sweep of a riding habit was always cumbersome on the ground, but wet, it was impossibly weighty. “We should shut the door, don’t you think?” she said without looking up. “It is beginning to blow in.”
As if physically prodded, William sprang toward the door and closed it, then turned to stare at Marianne again. He couldn’t help it.
“Water is dripping off your coat tails,” she said, laughing a little as she pointed at them. “You should try wringing, though I’m not having much luck.” When he didn’t move, she raised her eyes to his face, and what she saw there stifled speech. Marianne was suddenly conscious of the way her wet habit molded to every curve of her body, and of her hair in wild disarray about her face. She flushed vividly and abandoned her efforts to dry her skirt. Its waterlogged folds dragging over the dirt floor, she moved to the horses, hiding her scarlet face by turning her back. “How are you, Willow?” she asked her mount. She put a hand on the mare’s shoulder, and it twitched. “It’s all right,” she murmured.
Under control again, Marianne turned. “We can’t keep them here long; they’ll take cold.”
William, too, had sternly repressed his emotions. “And we shall contract a desperate chill.” He went to look through the narrow opening he had left in the door. “It is letting up a bit, I think.” But he didn’t sound convinced.
“It can’t go on raining this heavily for long,” responded Marianne. “And perhaps Susan and Tony will discover a carriage and come back for us.”
William nodded, trying to look optimistic. But his knowledge of Susan suggested it was far more likely she would settle herself in some comfortable shelter and wait for them to arrive. The proprieties of the situation would never occur to her, he thought bitterly.
An awkward silence fell, the first in the history of their acquaintance. Before, it had seemed they always had something to say to each other; now, suddenly, they had nothing. Every remark that Marianne thought of, and prepared to voice, seemed unwise or inane. She wanted to speak, to show William that she was perfectly at ease and thought nothing of the necessity of their remaining together here for some time—indeed, that she was quite pleased to do so—but the English language seemed inexplicably full of pitfalls, when a few minutes before it had been innocent.
William scarcely noticed her silence. He was wrestling with far more compelling problems. He had nearly pulled her into his arms, he thought guiltily, and he still wanted to. It was out of the question, of course. Marianne was under his care and in his power; he couldn’t take advantage of this accident to force himself upon her. Yet whenever he looked at her… He savagely cut off this line of thought. “Perhaps we should just ride on,” he said, his tone so harsh that Marianne blinked. “We can’t get any wetter, after all, and it may go on raining for hours.”
“You don’t think—?”
“I have said what I think!”
She stiffened, offended at the snap in his voice and unable to see what was causing this sudden unpleasantness. “I should prefer to wait awhile,” she answered coldly.
Irrationally, William felt as if this made everything her fault. Couldn’t she see the difficulty? “It is…unsuitable,” he replied.
At this, and recalling the look in his eyes a few moments before, Marianne did see. She flushed slightly again, at the same time amazed at herself. She
was no simpering milk-and-water miss, afraid to be left alone with a man for an instant; she never had been. What was it about Sir William Wyndham…? She raised her eyes and met his, dropping them again at once. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said shakily.
William, inexplicably, felt disappointed. But he strode at once to the horses and turned them toward the door. After quickly checking the harness, he looked at Marianne.
“You’ll have to throw me up,” she added in a voice that she scarcely recognized as her own. “There’s no block, and my skirts…” She gestured helplessly.
“Of course.” William might have been speaking to a stranger, one he did not find particularly amiable. His cool courtesy was discouraging. Standing beside her mare, he laced his fingers together and bent to allow her to step into them, his eyes resolutely on the floor.
Marianne put a hand on his shoulder and slowly raised her boot. For some reason, she felt like crying. William grasped her foot and prepared to throw her into the saddle as she tensed for the jump.
In the next instant, they both moved, but Marianne’s riding boot was slicked with mud from its soaking and movement about the dirt floor, and the floor itself was slippery with the water they and their animals had brought in. William slipped, and Marianne’s foot slid in his hands, and the two went down in a confused heap together, entangled in her heavy skirts.
“I…I beg your pardon,” gasped William, struggling to sit up and finding himself trapped by sodden cloth. He pushed out with his arms, and discovered that they were entwined around Marianne’s waist.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she responded, and twisted to kick her feet free of the folds of her dress. This brought her face to face with William, hardly two inches away, and made her vividly aware of his arms about her and the feel of his body along the length of hers. He was warm against the chill of her wet clothes. “It was slippery,” she added on a gasp.
Their eyes locked, and all thoughts of propriety went out of William’s mind. He knew only that he held this lovely girl close, as he had longed to do, and that she did not seem revolted. Indeed, her look held tremulous signs of encouragement. He bent his head and fastened his lips on hers. Marianne, equally rapt, wound her arms about his neck.