The Adventurers

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  ‘Well!’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Well?’ Denbigh’s voice mocked her lovingly. ‘With which objection do you propose to begin?’

  ‘Giles, it’s all very well… Our baggage is not of the slightest consequence, I suppose, but you yourself were the one who scolded me about the impropriety of traveling about Europe unchaperoned. Just think how you worried about Sonia here.’

  ‘It’s nothing to the way I worried about you.’ He had produced something from his pocket that rustled in the darkness. ‘That’s the other thing I had to break to you, my love. And incidentally, the reason why I was not able to come to you sooner. I have been busy this afternoon. Here is the result.’ He handed her a heavy piece of parchment. ‘Since you cannot possibly see to read it, you will have to take my word for the fact that it is a license for the marriage of one Giles Burnleigh and Elizabeth Helen Barrymore, spinster.’

  ‘A special license!’ And then, inconsequently, ‘You remembered the Helen.’

  ‘Believe me, I remembered everything. My love, will you forgive me for doing it thus, in huggermugger? The only English minister in Paris is waiting for us at my hotel. Marry me tonight, and the tongue of gossip is stopped—not that either of us cares a rap for that. But it does also mean that we can be of some slight service to our young friend here. Why, what’s the matter?’

  She was laughing delightedly. ‘Oh, Giles, I do adore you. When I think how you scolded me for pretending to be Mrs Barrymore.’

  ‘Of course I scolded you. I was so jealous I could hardly bear it. I don’t believe I shall ever quite forgive that non-existent Mr Barrymore. But of course you were quite right. Marriage is the only protection in a position of this kind. Only, this time, I intend you to marry me, and with every sanction and safeguard the church can devise.’

  ‘Lady Elinor said we would marry only to be divorced.’

  ‘Damn Elinor. If you mention her again on our wedding night I will shake you, Elizabeth.’ But—the carriage had slowed to a walking pace—‘here we are. Miss Barrymore’—once again that odd note of formality—‘will you marry me: here and now?’

  She sighed, pleasurably, in the darkness. ‘Lord Denbigh, though, of course, with the greatest reluctance, I will.’ And then, on a ripple of laughter: ‘You’d never have dared bully me like this before.’

  ‘No. Is it not a lucky thing for me that we are being married now, not then. I am going to rule you with a rod of iron, Liz.’

  ‘Liz indeed. Sonia, what would you do if you were me?’

  Sonia laughed. ‘Dear Elizabeth, for my sake, marry him. After all, think what you have gone through already for the sake of my reputation. Surely a little thing like marriage won’t daunt you?’

  ‘Very well,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But merely as a favour to you, of course, and with the greatest reluctance, Lord Denbigh, I consent.’

  ‘That’s lucky,’ said Denbigh.

  Escapade

  Jane Aiken Hodge

  Chapter One

  ‘But Charlotte.’ John Thornton had not expected the refusal. ‘We have always been such good friends. Please—’ He reached for her hand.

  ‘No, John. No, and no, and no!’ She faced him squarely on the solitary cliff path, with only the sound of the sea below, and the cry of gulls around them. He had got her out here, beyond the formal gardens of Windover Hall, on the pretext that an enemy ship was in sight, to the North, off Scarborough. Charlotte Comyn was gazing at it now, without seeing it, the bonnet she had snatched off dangling in her hand, the spring breeze ruffling her cropped curls. Now, at last, her dark eyes focused on his fair, flushed face. ‘I doubt I’m the marrying kind,’ she went on more gently, seeing how much she had shocked her old friend. ‘I’m not fit for it. Not fit for anything.’ Her eyes met his levelly. ‘Do you remember, you and the boys tied me to that tree once, went off and forgot all about me? Pity anyone came, really. It would have solved everything, saved everyone a lot of trouble.’

  ‘Charlotte!’ He looked at the stunted tree with a kind of horror, remembering all the times he and her younger half-brothers had teased and tormented her, a shamefully easy victim. ‘It was only our fun,’ he said now. ‘And we did come back.’

  ‘You did. I’ve always remembered that. You were sorry.’

  ‘Of course I was sorry.’ He was remembering how gallantly that younger Charlotte had pretended she had not been frightened, abandoned there, helpless, on the lonely cliff where no one came but scavenging gulls. ‘Charlotte—’ He reached again for her hand.

  ‘No,’ she said again. ‘That was then, and this is now. And you should be calling me Miss Comyn. Everything is different, and I don’t much like it.’

  ‘Of course you don’t like it.’ He seized the opening. ‘It makes me mad as fire to see the way they neglect you. Everything for the boys, down at Hull, and you sent off to moulder here at Windover, with only servants for company. It will be quite other when you come of age, and the bank and the house in Hull are yours.’

  ‘Four years.’ She was looking beyond him, at the wide prospect of sea and sky, as if at an endless, intolerable vista. ‘How shall I bear it? What shall I do with myself ?’

  ‘That’s just what I mean. Marry me, Charlotte, and everything will be different. You’ll have a place in the world. Father says he will give us a house; he has his eye on one of the new ones in Albion Street. That would do very well until you are twenty-one, he says. And then, trust us to fight your battle for you if there should be any trouble over your taking possession of Comyn’s Bank and the house in Hull. But of course there won’t be. You know that as well as I do.’

  ‘Do I?’ Her long, thin hands were ruthlessly crushing the bonnet. ‘You have talked this over with your father?’

  ‘Of course. And with my mother. They say it is what they have always hoped for, Charlotte. A union between our two houses.’ If his proposal had been on the formal side, he was becoming eloquent now. ‘You know how hard times are, ’specially for banks like yours and Thornton’s. Napoleon’s decrees have been death to trade; and then the harvests bad, and this new trouble with those upstarts in what they call the United States of America. When I told my father I meant to ask for your hand, he said it was the first bit of good news for years. Charlotte, you can’t disappoint us now. My mother says she quite longs to have the dressing of you.’

  ‘I’m such a dowd?’ She looked down at well-washed muslin too large for her thin frame. ‘You mustn’t blame my mother for that. What pleasure is there in dressing a beanpole like me? ’Specially when I keep losing weight. But anyway, you know Mother, she’s too busy with the Hull Review to care much about clothes, specially my clothes. And as for old Nurse Jenkins—she just thinks one should be clean, and covered. And what else should I care for, a long thin fright like me?’

  ‘But you’re not—’

  ‘I can’t do anything right.’ She went straight on, ignoring his attempt at protest. ‘Not for anyone. And with every chance. Taught alongside the boys; Mark always insisted on that.’

  ‘Should you call your step-father Mark?’

  ‘He likes it. We’re all equals, he says. I think he’d like me to call Mother Kathryn, but I won’t. She was my mother first, after all. I can’t help it if I was born less equal than the others. Even little Horatio can reckon faster than I can. I heard mother tell Mr Jenner she was quite in despair over what would happen to Comyn’s Bank when I come of age and take over.’

  ‘My mother always said no good would come of that crazy idea of making you study along with the boys. It stands to reason: girls have different talents, she says. I’m sure you are a dab hand at a syllabub, Charlotte.’

  ‘No, I’m not. And you will kindly call me Miss Comyn, Mr Thornton. And pray thank your mother from me for the kind interest she has taken in my education, along with everyone else in Hull.’ She was angry now, her colour high, dark eyes flashing under heavy brows that contrasted with the fair hair she had worn cropped short since her illness. He
found himself thinking this might prove more than the practical marriage he had been brought up to expect.

  ‘Dear Charlotte.’ He put a tentative hand on the bony wrist.

  ‘Don’t touch me.’ She snatched it away as if his hand burned. ‘And don’t call me “Dear Charlotte” either. I’m nobody’s dear. And stop taking me for granted.’ She fixed smouldering eyes on him, a new thought striking her. ‘Tell me, have you discussed this proposal of yours with my mother and step-father too?’

  ‘Well, of course. You surely never thought I would address you without their permission. I most certainly have their blessing.’

  ‘Given with sighs of relief.’ Savagely. ‘Well, I am sorry to disappoint you all, but the answer is still no. I wouldn’t have you if you were the last—’ And then, seeing real hurt in his face at last: ‘Oh, John, I’m sorry. I think the devil gets into me sometimes. I’m all at odds with myself. Just be grateful I have the good sense to refuse you. You know—all Hull does, thanks to my grandmother—how bad things were between my mother and father.’

  ‘The ravings of a sick old woman.’ He did not pretend not to understand her. ‘We never for a moment believed that wicked tale of hers about your father killing himself on purpose. It was just what your mother said at the time—and after all she was the only witness—a terrible accident with his gun. My mother says it was a pity old Mrs Comyn ever recovered from that seizure of hers. A paralysed old lady with nothing to think or talk about but the past, and the son she had lost. Of course she took to imagining things. You mustn’t let it trouble you. And those friends of hers, the Misses Harris, as spiteful a couple of cats as you could find in a month of Sundays. Natural enough, my father says, that there was talk when your mother married again so soon, and her childhood sweetheart too. Such a romantic tale: losing and finding each other like that. But you must never think, Charlotte, that your mother was anything but the best of wives to your father. Mother says she quite made a man of him. And she saved Comyn’s Bank, you know, after his death. Went off to London, bold as brass, shocking the old tabbies, and persuaded Goldferns the bankers to put up the money that was needed. Of course there was talk… You know Hull: there’s always talk. That’s why—don’t you see—Charlotte, I beg you to think again. It would solve everything; settle everything: your position; the talk. Our marriage would end it all. And I do truly love you.’ He very nearly believed it himself.

  ‘No.’ But she said it more gently now. There had been a moment, while he was speaking of her father’s death, when she had nearly told him about that old nightmare of hers. About her grandmother, old Mrs Comyn, lying among her pillows, in the luxurious bedroom where she was waited on hand and foot by her daughter-in-law, and spitting out her venom about her, day after day. But she would not think about that last scene, the day old Mrs Comyn died, the things she had said then. Not now, not ever. ‘Dear John, we’ve been such good friends, let’s not spoil it now. You’ve taken my side, time after time, and I’ve been grateful. But that’s not enough, and you know it as well as I do. You’ll be grateful to me, in the end, for saying no today.’

  ‘Your parents won’t be pleased.’

  ‘No.’ She faced it bleakly. ‘They really thought they were going to get me off their hands, did they?’

  ‘Don’t put it like that.’ But he was afraid it was true. Charlotte had always, somehow, seemed the odd one out in the Weatherby family. ‘What am I to say to them, Charlotte?’ A quick look at the watch on his fob. ‘I must be going; I said I would call in on my way home.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ She made a face that reminded him of a younger, happier Charlotte. ‘So I must expect my scold tomorrow. Unless there is a crisis at the paper and they are too busy. It always comes first.’

  ‘It’s a very good paper, the Hull Review, and a blessing to Hull.’

  ‘Which is more than anyone could call me.’ She chuckled suddenly and again he was reminded of his younger, carefree friend. ‘What a miserable, self-pitying wretch I am! No wonder my mother finds her newspaper more interesting. Off with you, John, tell them the bad news and leave me to brush through as best I may… With a bit of luck, and some dramatic news from our army in Spain, they may be too busy to scold me at all. And if they do—who cares?’

  Standing on the wide steps of Windover Hall’s Palladian front to watch him ride away, she was amazed at how confident she had managed to sound. ‘Who cares?’ Well, who would? Nobody cares, she thought, and then: why should they? Her very existence was a shame to her mother; no wonder Kathryn preferred the boys.

  If I were dead, she thought, the boys could have it all. I ought not to have been born. She thought about the sea, seething and churning below the cliffs, and something practical at the back of her mind whispered to her that the tide was low. Anyway, I don’t want to die, she thought, I just want everything to be different, to get away from it all.

  But where to go? She was instinctively making her way round the side of the house to her favourite refuge, the stable yard, and the comforting company of horses. Passing the low windows of the servants’ quarters, she remembered a story she was not supposed to know, a story of the servants’ hall. Her grandmother, the heiress of Windover, had made a disastrous second marriage, to a woman-hunting brute of a clergyman. Failing other game, he had pursued the maidservants at the Hall, and one of them, Beth Prior, had jumped out of one of these very windows to escape him. And, later, that same Beth had been her mother’s dear friend, and gone with her on that venturesome journey to London. Beth Prior! Her mother never spoke of her now, but she was a successful actress in London. London. Charlotte patted her horse’s nose and hurried into the house.