“It wasn’t my decision to junket about all over Europe,” he responded. “Only doing what I’m told.”
“Well, whoever told you to do any such thing should be ashamed,” she retorted but, Cecilia noticed, she did not look displeased with him and her tone was more teasing than censorious.
Mrs Moss, flushing with anger, said, “Well, I daresay it’s all very well for you, Ma’am, but I’d like to know what you’d do if you had no money and several children to feed.”
“I don’t know precisely what I would do,” Miss Godmanton conceded, “but I know what I would not do and that is drag them round Europe. That girl, your younger daughter, is not safe on her own and – if people knew you had not enough money to pay for your lodging – I hate to think what sort of suggestions she might receive.”
“Oh, she does receive them all the time,” Endymion admitted with a little twist of his handsome lips, “that’s another of my duties: to act as a sort of guard dog. I own I was a little anxious last night in case his lordship had improper designs upon her but my other sister, Miss Moss, assured me he could be trusted.”
“Miss Moss and I had a long discussion last night,” the Earl said, apparently unmoved by this impugning of his character, “the upshot of which is that she has consented to allow me to help you to find jobs when you reach Geneva.”
“Good God! What do you have in mind for me?” Endymion asked, startled and not altogether pleased.
“I haven’t decided yet. Do you want to go on being a groom or would you prefer something a little more gentlemanly if I can think of anything?”
“I don’t mind being a groom; horses, after all, have no sense of rank and I have never yet met one who looks down on me in anything but a literal sense. The drawback of course is that it doesn’t pay very well so that I cannot support my mother and sisters in the degree of comfort which I daresay they deserve.”
“Would you not like to join the army?” Miss Godmanton asked, thinking how handsome he would look in uniform.
“I own I would prefer not,” he admitted but did not expand upon his reasons.
“The navy then? That would of course be more difficult to arrange in Switzerland since they do not have a sea.”
“One of my brothers is in the navy,” Endymion told her, “but I would not be able to take care of my womenfolk if I were to spend all my time on the high seas. Someone has to take responsibility for them.”
“Of course,” Miss Godmanton agreed at once, this attitude gaining her unqualified approval, “and I admire you for your sense of duty, but would it not be advisable to look for husbands for your sisters?”
“Absolutely! I – we – have been looking for some time, but without much success so far as these two are concerned, although we did manage to place another one a few weeks ago. I have three sisters, you see, and two brothers. These two do present certain difficulties though, as you have no doubt noticed. One is a little old now and the other a little young.”
“Not too young to marry,” Miss Godmanton opined, “but perhaps difficult to place for other reasons. Why has the elder not married?”
“Oh, you’d best ask her,” Endymion said with a little nod at Cecilia, who was enduring this analysis of her spinsterhood without apparent annoyance. “But I think she’ll tell you she’s been taking care of us. She has had offers but has turned them down.”
While this discussion had been taking place, Cecilia had continued to eat her breakfast and to make sure that Phyllis ate hers. She had also been engaged in soothing her mother, who had threatened at several points to intervene and set Miss Godmanton right on her assessment.
Helen, having started the discourse about the Moss’s affairs, had sunk back into her usual passivity, but was nevertheless keeping a close eye on the way Miss Godmanton and Endymion were interacting. She suspected that there was an understanding between them and wondered where it might lead. She was fairly certain that Miss Godmanton’s initial disapproval of the family had extended to Endymion, whom she had very likely suspected of being a fortune hunter. Now that he had admitted to attending to the horses in order to pay for a night’s lodging, there could be no more doubt that he was in all worldly senses a vastly ineligible man and therefore one from whom it was the duty of a chaperone to protect her charge. All the same, it was Helen’s impression that Miss Godmanton had a good deal of time for him and might, while doing her utmost to protect her charge from his blandishments, be willing to succumb to them herself.
Breakfast concluded, Endymion jumped up and left the room, saying that he would see to the horses being put to for his lordship’s party first. Waldron had two carriages to be made ready, one to carry him, his cousin and her chaperone and the other to convey his valet and the women’s shared maid.
“You should make certain that your own vehicle is roadworthy,” the Earl said, “for, if it is not, I daresay we can fit you all into our carriages one way or the other.”
“That is excessively kind of you,” Mrs Moss said at once, swallowing her bread and jam so rapidly that she almost choked.
“But will be quite unnecessary,” Cecilia interrupted. “We have hired the coachman together with the coach to take us as far as Geneva and cannot lay him off in the middle of the Alps. I am persuaded the horses will be perfectly able to take us as far as the next stage, particularly when I am certain Endymion will have looked after them impeccably since we arrived.
“But, thank you, my lord, for the exceedingly kind offer. You have done quite enough for us already and really cannot be expected to add us to your party at this stage for, although I suppose it would be possible to cram us all in, I cannot help feeling it would be a trifle tight.”
“Very well,” he responded, bowing, but with an amused expression on his face. “Will you at least consent to meet us at the first changing post so that I can be assured that you have not broken down in some benighted place where you will very likely freeze to death? There are not many inns in this area so that, if your coach does suffer an accident, you might find yourselves a long way from help.”
“Certainly,” she agreed, hoping that a promise to meet later would mollify her mother, who was clearly disappointed that she would not be able to squeeze Phyllis into an overcrowded coach with his lordship
.
Chapter 11
The two families left the inn within half an hour of each other, Cecilia having insisted Lord Waldron’s party set off first. The Earl initially argued that he would prefer to be behind so that, if and when their coach broke down, he would be able to come to their aid immediately. She pointed out that, since her party was bound to be a great deal slower, she would be only too conscious that they were holding up his lordship – and he might find the torpid progress exasperating.
“I can understand you might not want us breathing down your neck,” he acknowledged eventually. “Very well; we will meet again for nuncheon.”
“How can you have been so foolish as to refuse his lordship’s help?” Mrs Moss asked as they drove out of the courtyard. “We are bound to break down now and nobody will know.”
The sky was grey, the air cold and the result of the previous night’s sleet and snow had covered the road in a thin layer of what looked like a length of muslin, which the passage of his lordship’s wheels had already torn into ragged strips. The much-maligned horses began well, stepping out with apparent eagerness in the wake of the Earl’s two equipages. The carriage, unfortunately, displayed no such improvement and indeed, seemed to have acquired an additional rattling, which did not inspire confidence in its occupants.
“I can see no reason why we should, and, in any event, we cannot allow ourselves to become dependent upon him,” Cecilia said. She did not want to admit that she had felt a lowering of the spirit as the Waldron carriages had disappeared from view.
“Your pride will be the death of us,” Mrs Moss muttered.
“I hope not.”
“Of course it will not,” Endymion said, comi
ng to his sister’s defence. “We may not have the most handsome set of horses in the world, but they are perfectly capable of dragging us up the mountain, at least as far as the next change. Indeed, I made certain they had the best of the fodder last night and am glad to note that they have quite a spring in their step this morning. Cecilia is right: if we had set off first, the knowledge that his lordship was champing at the bit behind us might have made us flog them beyond their competence and then we very likely would end up in the ravine.”
“And we will see them again soon,” Phyllis said brightly. “I’m looking forward to that.”
She had enjoyed the evening and had conceived a childish admiration for Miss Lenham, who had listened to her without once hinting that she knew nothing or that her opinion was of no value.
“I’m persuaded his lordship will be looking forward to it too,” Mrs Moss said at once. “Why, he looked quite sad when he drove off without us.”
“Did he?” Phyllis asked, rather surprised. “Perhaps he liked having another man to talk to.”
Endymion laughed at this and Mrs Moss said, “I’m sure he has plenty of male friends to talk to in Geneva without needing to add Endymion to his acquaintance, but a pretty girl – that is another matter.”
“I think he did like talking to Cissy,” Phyllis agreed.
“He was far more taken with you, my dear,” her mother said.
“I don’t think he was, Mama,” Phyllis replied after thinking about this for a few minutes. “He was excessively polite, and he did ask me what I thought about Turin, but it was my impression that he found Cissy amusing. He laughed a lot when he was talking to her.”
“Your sister makes a point of being amusing, but men do not fall in love with women who make them laugh,” Mrs Moss told her.
“Do they not, Mama? How do you know?” Endymion asked.
“Because they only want to be friends with people they find amusing,” Mrs Moss replied with conviction. “Falling in love is a much more intense affair.”
“Mmn,” her son murmured, “more like an illness, I suppose you mean – and most people wouldn’t find that precisely humorous.”
“Did you think Miss Godmanton amusing?” Phyllis asked him. “You spent a lot of time talking to her.”
“But not, as I recall, laughing,” he retorted. “Is Miss Lenham amusing?”
“No, I don’t think so – at least she did not make me laugh, but she was very agreeable and sympathetic. I liked her.”
“I did not,” Mrs Moss said at once. “I thought her a sour-faced creature who looked down her nose at us.”
“Oh, she did not!” Phyllis said, firing up in defence of her new friend. “She was kind. Did you think Miss Godmanton kind, Dym?”
“No, I can’t say I did, but then I wasn’t looking for kindness. I sought only to pass the evening with as much civility as possible and, since I suspected the good lady of having an exceedingly low opinion of us as a family, I attempted to change her mind.”
“I believe you succeeded beyond your wildest hopes,” Cecilia said. “She appeared positively smitten with you.”
Endymion looked horrified by this, as well he might, for to have inspired ardour in such a bosom filled him with something akin to revulsion.
“What in the world do you mean?”
“What I said! You made such a play for her – I presume in order to get her on side for when you make your approach to Miss Lenham – that she will be excessively reluctant to relinquish her grasp. I do believe she has fallen prey to the tender passion and fear that, in a person of her age, it may prove fatal or at least chronic.”
“My God! I assume you are funning!”
“Not a whit; you will have your work cut out to avoid her now and, when she realises that the whole thing was a put-up job to provoke Miss Lenham, I would not be at all surprised if she turned quite nasty to pay you out for deceiving her!”
“The devil!” he exclaimed and fell silent, an anxious expression marring his perfect features.
Cecilia, having, as she thought, brought him to a proper realisation of his conduct, sat back in her corner with a satisfied expression until Phyllis asked, “Where did you sleep last night, Cissy?”
Mrs Moss, who had been wondering the same thing but had not yet decided which would be the most useful approach to a daughter who was not above leaping on to her high horse and snapping at her anxious mama, perked up at this sign of her younger daughter doing the work for her.
Endymion, who had not known that the women had not shared a chamber, looked startled.
“Do you tell me you have been twitting me on exerting my charm upon the chaperone whilst concealing your own far more serious misdemeanour?”
“I am concealing nothing. I slept in an excessively comfortable chamber which his lordship caused to be prepared for me after I inadvertently disturbed him while he was drinking a glass of brandy. The rest of you had gone to bed.”
“Why had you not gone to bed?”
“Well, as we had observed earlier, I did not in fact have a bed and had, in any event, a pile of mending to do after I had washed the dishes. I went into the saloon in the hope of finding another log to put on the fire; the house was so quiet that I thought everyone had retired.”
“And you found Waldron lost in contemplation of the mysterious family to whom he had opened the door. Did you admit to not having a bed?”
“I own I did; the thing is, I would not have told him, I would not have divulged anything about our circumstances if I could somehow have resisted his sympathetic questioning. He seemed to have such a very good idea of our situation – and offered to help find us lodgings and employment – that I thought I should take advantage of his kind offer.”
“What have I said all along?” Mrs Moss asked with considerable satisfaction. “The intervention of a kind gentleman is precisely what we need, and I cannot tell you how irritating it has been to be obliged to manage this family on practically nothing simply because you have been too proud to accept help. The only thing which surprises me – and I own rather shocks me – is that you are treading upon Phyllis’s toes in attaching Waldron for yourself.”
“I have not attached him nor trod upon Phyllis’s toes. There was nothing improper in his lordship’s manner and his offer of help does not, at least so far as I can see at present, involve any unpleasant transaction on our part. He is simply a kind gentleman, a diplomat, who no doubt considers it his duty to offer succour to fellow Englishmen.”
“Faugh!” Mrs Moss exclaimed. “There is no such thing as a kind gentleman who does not expect payment in kind of some sort! How can you be so naïve?”
“Well, perhaps I have been, and I will pay whatever the price is – but be very sure that I will negotiate it before agreeing to anything.”
“Did he mention what sort of employment he might find us?” Endymion asked.
“He seemed to think it would be easy to find us work as seamstresses.”
“Shall I have to become a tailor?”
“I never thought of that – and I don’t think he did. Could you?”
“I suppose I could turn my hand to anything so long as it did not involve much in the way of learning,” Endymion said with a little downward turn of his mouth.
“You are not so very lacking in education,” Cecilia reminded him. “I have done my best to instruct you.”
“I know you have, dearest Cissy, but I am about as learned as you – and that is by no means sufficient for a gentleman.”
She nodded but said, “What would you like to do?”
“Like to do? Lord, I hadn’t thought of anything I might like; I had rather thought that my choice veered between manual work – perhaps in a stable – or marrying an heiress.”
“You’re wasting your time on Miss Lenham – she is not an heiress.”
“Did he give you that helpful piece of information last night?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure I believe it; I ima
gine he is expected to marry her, and I assume that the deal will be her fortune for his title. He won’t want me to snatch it from under his nose.”
“No, I don’t suppose he would. I am simply telling you what he told me.”
“Why, if he has plenty of money himself, would he choose to live abroad and work as a diplomat? Would he not be at home minding his estates?”
“I should have thought so but … you may be right; all the same, I would strongly advise against entering into competition with him. He is a powerful man and you, Dym, for all your dazzling beauty, are still very young, more or less uneducated and with absolutely nothing to call your own. You would not stand a chance.”
“I stand just as good a chance as he of awakening Miss Lenham’s passions – indeed rather more since she has known him all her life and doesn’t appear to be precisely smitten with him, whereas I …”
“You are very handsome, but it takes more than looks to engage a woman’s affections and, if you are to beat him, you would have to be quite remarkable.”
He laughed. “Is that an indication of how attractive you find him?”
Cecilia blushed. “It is an indication of how attractive he is in every way that anyone could think of; he is handsome, bears a noble title and is clearly a man of the world and – whether he is looking for a fortune or not – is demonstrably not poor. He offers kindness and protection and is wonderfully free of that horrid leering that so many men seem unable to control.”
Endymion, during this recital, had been watching his sister with sympathy. Now he said, “Why do you not try to secure him for yourself? He clearly likes you; it is only because of you that he invited us to dinner, procured a bedchamber for you without exacting payment in kind – at least so far as one can tell at this juncture - offered to convey us across the Alps and is apparently prepared to find us all gainful employment. It was the sight of your face at the window which prompted him to open the door. Take him!”
Cecilia Or Flight From A Shadow Page 10