She was done with thinking and lay herself down on the bed, fully clothed. She would think no more but gather her strength for the day ahead. But unfortunately she found that there was more to be thought of, and despite her best intentions, her mind turned to Philip Merrival, or rather James, Captain James Howard, and finally, the tears flew down her cheeks.
She thought of how he had been so inarticulate when first they met and how he had won her respect with his quick mind and lively sense of humor. She thought of their growing friendship, of their rides across the fields, their rambling walks in the overgrown garden and their long talks in the library. She thought of all those things and knew deep in her heart that she would never experience such happiness again, though she had scarce realized at the time how happy she had been. She remembered how angry she had been at him and how very funny James had looked in the garden, so abject and contrite and yet still hopeful all at once. She knew that if she had the chance, she would throw all scruples aside and marry him gladly. Yet she knew without a doubt that it was too late.
She slept at last, but it was a troubled sleep that left her near exhausted in the morning and with no inclination to rise from her bed. But there were things to be done. She would walk the five miles to Miss Grantham’s and throw herself upon that worthy lady’s mercy. And if necessary, she would walk another five miles, or ten, until she found a temporary refuge from which she could write home and advise her sister to make haste to London so that she could return to Lynnfield without compromising her.
Thus determined, Elaine tidied her hair, brushed the wrinkles out of her gown and made her way downstairs to request breakfast of the landlord. When she asked after Jem, he told her that the stable lad had not yet returned from his cottage home whence he had repaired the night before. “And that black it is still, this fog, that I don’t expect him back at all today. For no one’s out and about at all that I can see, and there’s no work here that I can’t turn my hand to.” Nor would the landlord give her directions to Miss Grantham’s house, “For it’s much too long a way for a young lady like yourself to wander unattended, and you’ll never find it anyway, the fog being what it is.”
“I wish you would stop talking about the fog! It will surely lift before much longer.” But he pointed mutely towards the window, and when she looked she could see that she was quite certainly wrong. The fog was thicker and even more impenetrable than the night before and showed no sign at all of lifting. In great frustration, Elaine had no choice but to admit that not only was there no hope she might find her way on her own through strange country, but there was the greatest of likelihoods that even a native would go astray.
Discouraged, she went back up to the parlor, where Lord Derring eventually joined her. He had clearly taken more pains with his attire than she had with hers, but even so his coat looked slightly rumpled after a night without the usual attentions of a valet. He had had the forethought to bring along an extra neckcloth, but had had no real expectation of needing it since he had an ample supply at Challon. Thus it was that this morning he had had the novel experience of tying his neckcloth, knowing that he had but this one chance at perfection and so he had chosen a more simple style than was his usual custom. He was most apologetic and wished to make it clear to his intended that his laxity in this case meant no disrespect to her. However the lady continued her policy from the evening before of ignoring any comments he made and after a time, he finally lapsed into silence and sat down to eat his breakfast.
“I’m sorry to report that our good landlord warns me against proceeding any further in this fog,” the Viscount told her once the breakfast dishes had been cleared away. “I’m very much afraid we shall be forced to spend a most tedious day here together, my dear, and we shall both be most uncomfortable if you persist in rebuffing all my poor attempts at conversation.”
“It seems to me that a tedious day is a small price for you to pay for quite ruining my reputation.”
“That’s better! Indeed I am well served. But do think, Miss Howard, I am most eager to salvage your reputation. Only marry me and your reputation remains intact.”
“Never!” She got up from the table and moved to the window, putting as far a distance as possible between them.
“Well, never is a very long time you know,” the Viscount said in what he hoped was a soothing tone of voice. “I must say I may have developed a perhaps unrealistic regard for your good sense. I would have thought that after considering the situation carefully, you would have come to the realization that you have no alternative but to marry me.”
“I am not such a poor creature as to give in to you in this. I’ll not have you.”
“Think again my dear. Am I such a bad bargain? You know that despite your initial prejudice, we have not dealt so badly with one another. I have found your company most refreshing and believe us to be quite compatible. I assure you I have the greatest regard for you, and if it is not a love match on your side, well many a successful marriage has begun with no more than mere liking, and I cannot be wrong in feeling that you have often found me an amusing companion. Furthermore I can offer you a life quite suited to your interests, for James tells me you have done quite a superior job of bringing the Lynnfield estates about. I can promise you the same opportunity awaits you at Challon. The house has a far prettier prospect than Lynnfield, I assure you, and is sorely in need a good Mistress to put it all in order, and as for the lands, I am certain they could use no end of drainage ditches and bridges and road repairs. My devotion to you is such that I will bow to your every wish, so that you can institute any manner of economies and reforms. We could even round up a bunch of ragged urchins for you to educate, if you feel you must. Believe me, you will find much to keep you busy and a life not at all unlike that which you have enjoyed at Lynnfield. I assure you, I most sincerely mean to make you happy.”
Elaine looked at him in amazement. “You want a housekeeper and a bailiff, sir. Not a wife.”
“You wrong me. I have a housekeeper and a bailiff both. A wife is precisely what I want.”
“Then go find one that wants you. But in truth, it is not a wife you seek, but a fortune. Well you shall not have it by me!”
“Spite, Miss Howard? That is not like you. Are you telling me you would ruin yourself just for spite?”
“It is not I, but you who have ruined me, sir. But it will not be. You see, I have indeed considered the situation most carefully. Spinsterhood has never been alarming to me; indeed I have often welcomed the notion. And now, after consideration I find I am quite resigned to scandal and ruination as well. It will be unpleasant at first, to be sure, but I believe I can grow accustomed to a more restricted existence, and in time, you know, such scandals are, if not precisely forgotten, then abandoned as old news and not so very entertaining after all.”
For the first time the Viscount felt an uncomfortable sense of uncertainty. “You would choose ruin over marriage to me? I cannot credit it!”
“Nevertheless it is so. I have told you, I’ll not be forced to do what is repugnant to me.”
The expression that came over Lord Derring’s handsome face just then was so ridiculously startled that it would have made Elaine laugh outright were she not at that moment so very furious with him.
“Repugnant?” he repeated in amazement. “Well I’ll be damned if that isn’t carrying it too far! Dash it, Miss Howard, you cannot find me repugnant!”
“How else should I find you?” Elaine was relentless. “Marriage to a man I do not love? Marriage to one who wants me only for a fortune that I do not want for myself? Marriage to a liar and a deceiver and an abductor of women? How could I not find that repugnant?”
Lord Derring stared at her aghast. He had anticipated some initial hesitance, even reluctance, to be sure, but it had never occurred to him that she would take such a view of the situation as this. He had even fancied she might find the experience somewhat romantical. At worst, he had anticipated some tears before the inevitab
le surrender, tears which he would dry with promises and the most chaste of caresses. He had intended to act the part of a man nobly restraining his passions, acting from that purest of motives, Love – a man driven to this desperate act at last only by the urgency of his need to possess her for his own.
Instead, from the very first he had been confronted with an ice maiden with a mind fully bent upon extricating herself from an untenable situation. He had listened to her conversation with the landlord the night before, standing silently in the hallway at the top of the stairs, and he had been favorably impressed with her resourcefulness and cool head, but even then he had thought she must ultimately concede defeat. A night of reflection must have shown her cool mind that there was no other way.
But this morning he was deeply shaken to find that Miss Howard was a being not at all like his sisters. Nor was she, as he had once supposed merely bad tempered. She was, he reflected ruefully, magnificently different from any woman he had ever known, a goddess in fact. Athena, or perhaps it was Diana who stood so scornfully before him. He felt himself quite outmatched. He wished to tell her that he had this very moment fallen hopelessly in love with her, but after all that had gone before, he could see that such a declaration would be most unconvincing.
“I’m a damned fool!” he said instead. “Whatever shall we do?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: In which Remorse does not necessarily bring Redemption.
It took Elaine some little while to understand that her erstwhile abductor was now most sincerely desirous of salvaging her reputation. He remained reluctant to drive her to Miss Grantham’s house, for not only did the black fog continue to provide a dangerous obstacle to their success in finding the place, but he could not help but feel that it would be most unwise to rely upon the understanding and discretion of this unknown spinster.
“No, the only thing to do is to return you safely to Lynnfield just as soon as the fog lifts. Once there we can devise some story or other, and you can be sure your family will accept it. Perhaps no one has noticed our absence.”
“Well of course they have. What a nodcock you are to be sure! They must all be worrying and wondering by now, and have been doing so ever since we failed to show up for dinner last night.”
Lord Derring received this remonstration without protest, for he knew that what she said was true. “Never mind. We will think of something to tell them. But we must get you back to Lynnfield today, and how we are to do it in this fog, I do not know.”
It was at this moment, that they heard the sound of horsemen riding into the Inn’s front yard. “There is someone on the road at last,” Elaine exclaimed. “Perhaps the fog has cleared elsewhere, and we need only go a short way along the road home before we reach the end to it. Do go down and ask. I will wait in here, for I’m sure that we agree at least on this one thing, that it is best if I am not seen.”
The Viscount ran to do his goddess’s bidding. She heard a glad shout and then a short scuffle followed by a heated discussion, and then Lord Derring returned to the parlor, with a linen handkerchief held tight to his nose and a glowering James fast on his heels. Tibley crowded into the room behind them and closed the door.
“You see, James, she is fine. There’s no need for you to raise such a pother. Tell him, Miss Howard. Tell him that you are in fine fettle. What we want, James, is to know if the fog has lifted yet to the east of us, for it is imperative that we return the lady to Lynnfield just as soon as possible.”
“It is true?” James addressed Elaine. “You are all right?”
“Yes. Oh, yes! I have not been harmed, but you can see for yourself what an awkward fix we are in. Is it indeed safe to travel, James? Can we make it home all right?”
“If you wish to go home, then indeed we will make it home. I had gathered from the landlord before Charles came down to me that you were rather on your way to Challon.”
“Not I!” Elaine exclaimed indignantly and then, catching sight of Lord Derring’s face, hesitated. It suddenly seemed churlish in her to disparage the Viscount who was now after all so committed to undoing his folly. He was grievously at fault, there was no gainsaying it, but somehow she could not bring herself to denounce him to his friend. It was rather up to him to admit his fault. So she merely said, “That is, no, of course not. We merely became lost in the fog and ended up here. The landlord mistook. Lord Derring mentioned Challon, of course, and the landlord misunderstood. But indeed I only want to go home to Lynnfield. Oh James, do you really think we can get there in this horrid fog?”
His look quite pierced her through, but there was no help for it. She met his gaze as steadily as she could. After a moment he nodded and said quietly, “We will go slowly, and I’ll go in front and lead the horses all the way if need be. It is still early, but the days are short this time of year and we had best make a start of it soon if we want to be home before nightfall.”
Elaine could see that both the Captain and Tibley were exhausted, and with a few pointed questions discovered that the two men had been up all night searching for them.
“You will sit down now and eat something before we go, for if you do not, we will make it no further than to the next inn down the road, and I am determined that I will not spend another night away from Lynnfield.”
James could not deny the wisdom in this, so Tibley was sent down to the landlord to instruct him to bring more food – not only a warm breakfast now, but some sandwiches and bottles of ale for them to carry with them.
“However did you find us in this fog?” Elaine asked James. “Does it go all the way to Lynnfield?”
“It did, though we can hope that it may have lifted a little by now. It certainly continues thick here – it seems to me that it may be a denser black now even than last night if that is possible. The fog was what delayed me getting back to Lynnfield. I didn’t arrive there until well after dinner, probably some four or five hours after your departure. Your father and sister were beginning to feel worried, so Tibley and I started off to see if we could find you. They told me you were going to fetch the boy home, so we went first to his mother’s cottage to see if you’d gotten back yet, but instead of an anxious mother, we found Bart himself, all in one piece and unharmed. The young rascal had slipped out of the cottage on some devilish errand or other and had gotten turned around in the fog. It was sheer luck that brought him onto the path in front of us before we got to the cottage to inquire about him. I sent him back home with such a scold I doubt he stopped to wonder what our errand could be at that time of night.
“I guessed then, Charles, that you were up to one of your caper-witted tricks – no, don’t bother pitching me one of your Banbury tales either, for I know you too well. Anyway Tibley here confirmed that he had not been there when you were supposed to have received the message about the boy, and indeed, that had seemed a little odd to me from the start, for why should anyone send to you for such an errand? My first thought was to head directly to Challon, but it took no more than a minute to realize that the fog would have stopped you short of your destination. So we went back to Lynnfield, and after telling Mr. Howard what I feared had happened, we got these oil lamps and started out after you, with Tibley on the right hand side of the road and me on the left, more or less feeling our way down the road and asking of anyone we passed if they’d seen a damn fool drive by in a yellow chaise.”
“And someone saw us?” Elaine asked.
“For a long time we could find no one who had, though it did seem that despite the fog someone must have seen something, for there are cottages scattered here and there by the wayside, and you must admit Charles’s yellow chaise is the sort of thing that people notice. We stopped at each cottage and woke them up to ask if they’d seen it, telling them a wager was at stake. I can tell you we got a bear garden jaw or two for tomfoolery and disturbing the sleep of decent folk, but no one had seen the chaise.
“After a while I began to worry that I had guessed wrong and was about to turn back when Tibley came upon a
tinker’s caravan stranded in the fog, stopped right by the road. We rousted the fellow and he said he had seen the yellow chaise turn off the main throughway about four miles back. So we turned and headed back. By that time the fog was so thick and black it took us most of an hour to cover each mile. We finally found this track about seven o’clock in the morning. It has taken us another four hours to make our way here. This is the only inn we saw on this godforsaken track.
“I must say Charles I never saw a sight in my life that made me so glad as when I saw your face just now – nor one, for that matter, that could put me into such a flame as I am in now. Good God, man! I never took you for such a loose screw!” With a visible effort James refrained from further speech as the landlord came into the room with a tray of food.
“There’s no point in ripping at Lord Derring now, Cousin.” Elaine spoke up as soon as the landlord left, hoping to forestall the resumption of what she felt could only embroil them in the sort of altercation that would delay them still further. “We can both agree most heartily that he deserves a royal trimming, and if you will but notice, you will see that he is quite of the same mind. But I beg you to keep your attention on the business at hand, which is to get some good warm food into you and Tibley quickly so we can be on our way. You have shown excellent judgment so far, and if we can only get back home quietly and before nightfall, we may yet find our way out of this tangle – if only others have had the same presence of mind as you.”
She turned to her erstwhile abductor. “Lord Derring, while the Captain and Tibley are eating, do you think you could turn your famous charm upon our good landlord? I am afraid that my agitation led me to be less than prudent yesterday evening. At least I can congratulate myself that I did not tell him my name. However I am persuaded that you will know exactly the right amount of coin to give him that will be both enough to encourage him to be discrete and yet not so much as to persuade him there is something to be gained by spreading stories. Maybe you could just drop a hint that I am some, some bird of paradise, for I am persuaded that is what he already believes to be the case.”
An Unmarried Lady Page 19