by M C Beaton
He threaded his way in and out of the Mayfair traffic, paying no attention to his companion. Henrietta was too busy with her jumbled thoughts to notice the direction they were taking and it was with some surprise that she eventually noticed that they were not heading in the direction of the park.
“We are going out into the country,” remarked Lord Reckford, answering her unspoken question. “For once, we are going away from the Henrys and the Beldings and the Ralstons and the Scattersworths. I declare I have seen so much of them of late that there seem to be hundreds of them.”
Henrietta was suddenly afraid of her own emotions. It had been some time since she had seen him alone. Her knees began to tremble and she felt quite faint. “You must hold on very tightly, Miss Sandford,” said Lord Reckford looking down at her with a glint of mischief in his eyes. “My cattle are fresh and I am going to spring them.”
The wind and the unfamiliar countryside whipped past them. Henrietta clutched the side of the curricle and shut her eyes tight. One minute it seemed she was sitting in the carriage with every bone in her body being jolted about and the next she was sailing through the air. She landed with a heavy crash in a dry ditch and lay staring wild-eyed at the summer sky. She could hear the horses rearing and plunging and then they were quiet. There seemed to be a sudden dreadful silence and men, as the dizzy whirling of her brain stopped, the little noises of the countryside crept to her ears. Somewhere nearby, a heavy animal was grazing. A lark seemed to hang suspended far above her, the sound of his song tumbling down to her from very far away. The air was heavy with the scent of mown grass, wild honeysuckle and pine.
She cautiously moved her limbs and found that nothing was broken and then painfully raised herself up on one elbow. With a sudden stab of panic, she realized she had not heard a sound from Lord Reckford. Her head did not reach over the edge of the ditch, so cautiously and painfully she struggled to her feet. Lord Reckford lay at the side of the road where he had been thrown from the carriage. His head lay on a stone and a thin trickle of blood was oozing into the dust of the road.
She ran forward and knelt down beside him. He lay as still as death, his face waxy under the blazing sun. Then he groaned faintly and slowly opened his eyes. “My horses?” he said faintly.
Henrietta looked round. His matched greys were grazing unconcernedly at the side of the road. “Your horses are perfectly well,” said Henrietta, “and just in case you might perhaps feel some concern, so am I.”
He smiled faintly and then sat up with a groan. “Oh, my head. God I feel sick.”
“There is a field across the road with a little stream,” said Henrietta. “If you can lean on me, I can help you cross it and then bathe your head.”
“My sensible angel,” he murmured. He threw an arm round her shoulders and they got to their feet and inched their way across into the field. He moaned and sank down on a pile of freshly cut grass beside the stream, dragging Henrietta down with him. She gently extricated herself and tried to rip a flounce from her petticoat to use as a bandage. But the seams refused to break. “No need for such sacrifice,” said her companion with a return of something of his usual mocking manner. He held out a large sensible handkerchief.
Henrietta soaked it in the stream and then timidly parted the heavy black hair. “It does not look too bad, my lord,” she said, carefully washing the wound. “How do you feel?”
“Sick as a dog,” he replied, “but no bones broken. I shall come about presently but at the moment, all I want to do is put my head down on that beautiful bosom and sleep.”
He rolled over and casually suited the action to the words. Henrietta had lost her fichu in the accident and felt almost naked. He could not possibly be asleep! But his rhythmical breathing showed that he was. She lay back against the pile of grass and stared at the sky, cradling the heavy wet head on her bosom and wondered if she were going to faint from an excess of emotion. Then after some time, the heat of the day and the reaction to the shock of the accident overcame her, and she too closed her eyes and slept.
As the sun was setting behind the trees, Lord Reckford opened his eyes and for a few horrible seconds did not know where he was. His cheeks was pillowed on a well-rounded bosom and far above him, little feathery clouds were turning red and gold in the evening sky. At last he remembered, and cautiously raised his head and stared down at the sleeping girl. Her dress was crumpled where his heavy body had lain on it. Tendrils of damp hair clung to her brow and she sighed gently in her sleep.
He was overcome with a feeling of tenderness and did not wish to wake her and spoil the moment. The countryside was very still. The water chuckled over the stones and far away across the fields, a dog bayed to the rising moon.
Then there was the sound of rough voices on the road and Henrietta’s hazel eyes jerked wide open. “Come quickly,” said Lord Reckford. “I am afraid of losing my horses.”
They stiffly emerged on to the roadway to find a farmer and his son examining the overturned curricle… or rather the farmer was down on his knees inspecting the carriage while his son sat vacantly on the farm wagon, bucolically chewing on a piece of grass.
The farmer raised his head at their approach. “This your’n?” he asked laconically. “Ur lynch-pin ’as bin sawn through.”
“What!” shouted the Beau, making his audience jump.
“Zactly. Sawn through ’er be.”
Henrietta felt a cold knot of fear in her stomach.
“Where is the nearest blacksmith?” demanded his lordship, his features harsh and drawn in the twilight.”
“Reckon smiddy’s a mile or so down road. But you and your missus ’op on the wagon and us’ll have you there soon.”
In all her fright. Henrietta felt a warm glow at being taken for the Beau’s “missus.” The horses were tethered to the back as Lord Reckford helped Henrietta up onto the farm wagon. The farmer clucked to his horse which moved off down the road at a leisurely pace.
After a mile or so they saw the twinkling lights of a village. “There’s an inn there. Coach an’ ’Orses,” said the farmer. “Leave your missus there and us’ll get the blacksmith.”
The Coach and Horses proved to be a small but comfortable inn and Henrietta wearily trailed after Lord Reckford into the brightly lit hallway, unaware of her appearance.
She cringed before the basilisk stare of the landlord’s wife who was glaring at Henrietta’s expanse of bosom and mud-stained dress. The landlord’s wife folded her arms and, ignoring Lord Reckford, addressed Henrietta. “We’re respectable folk here. You can take yourselves off this minute.”
She caught the look in Lord Reckford’s eye and fell silent. “My good woman,” he said, each word dripping like acid. “You will arrange a bedchamber for this lady so that she may repair her dress, you will arrange a private parlor for the both of us and you will set about cooking dinner. And spare me any further of your damned insolence.” He turned to the farmer without looking at her further. His lordship expected his commands to be obeyed and Henrietta found herself envying him. Was he not aware of their appearance? But the woman dropped something like a curtsy and led Henrietta to a bedchamber on the upper floor.
After the woman had gone, Henrietta pushed open the window latch and leaned out. There was a small garden at the back of the inn with a few tables. The heavy scent of lavender and stock drifted up in the evening air. She stayed there, drinking in the peace of the evening, unwilling to move and go back to the real world. Relationships between men and women did not remain static. That much she had gleaned from her observations of the parishioners of Nethercote. Lord Reckford did not love her. Therefore the only logical progression was that they should part at the end of the Season. Henrietta wished that it were mid-winter so that a snowstorm might entrap them in the inn. Then she laughed and closed the window. Miss Mattie would certainly have something dramatic to make of that situation.
The floorboards creaked in the corridor outside and there was a firm knock at the door.
She opened it and gazed up at Lord Reckford.
“My carriage cannot be repaired tonight, Miss Sandford, and if we stay here, you will be sadly compromised. I have sent one of the ostlers to the nearest town to hire us a conveyance.”
Henrietta suddenly became aware of her still dishevelled appearance. Lord Reckford had miraculously managed to transform himself back into his old elegant self.
“I bought this from the landlord’s wife,” he said handing her a heavy, crimson wool shawl. “Would you like me to send her up to you to help arrange your hair.”
She put her hand up to her tangled locks. “No, it will not be necessary,” she said, thinking of the landlord’s sour-faced wife. “I shall join you presently.”
He bowed very formally and left. She washed as best she could and arranged her hair in the dim light of one tallow candle.
Her efforts were not entirely successful. “You look like a gypsy,” smiled Lord Reckford when she entered the parlor with the crimson shawl draped round her shoulders. He drew out a chair for her and motioned her towards the table.
They ate in a companionable silence until the farmer’s son arrived to tell them that a carriage and pair were waiting for them in the courtyard.
When they were seated in the comfortable, if musty, darkness, Lord Reckford said, “What will you do when the Season ends, Henrietta? I do not like to think of you unprotected. Our madman has turned murderer.”
“I had not thought,” said Henrietta. “What are your own plans?”
“Oh, I shall follow Prinny and the fashionables to Brighton. This is to be my last year of the social round.” She felt his face turn towards her in the darkness. “Next year I shall retire to my estates, marry, and set up my nursery.”
“I thought you were a confirmed bachelor,” said Henrietta in a small voice.
“Ah, but we old roués must settle down sometime. Shall you visit me and play with my children?”
“No,” choked Henrietta.
“Don’t like children, eh?” he drawled maddeningly. “But you must like mine. We are such good friends, you see.”
Was he being deliberately cruel? How could this wretched man sleep all afternoon on her bosom and calmly talk about the children he was to have by another woman?
Just as she felt that she was about to break down into tears, he changed the subject. “I feel you should visit Brighton as well, Henrietta. Who else is going to take care of you?”
How Henrietta longed to scream childishly that she did not wish to go to Brighton but instead she remarked in a matter of fact voice, “It will surely be very hard to find accommodation at this late date.”
“Stay with me,” said the Beau with maddening unconcern. “My sister has taken a large mansion on the Marine Parade and she and her husband will act as chaperone.”
“If I am to take up residence in your household, my lord, the gossips will certainly have something to talk about.”
“But nothing disrespectful,” he rejoined laconically. “You will keep the scalp-hunters at bay until I decide on a wife.”
“Have you considered, my lord, that I do not wish the scalp-hunters to be kept away from me? I am desirous of marriage, you know,” said Henrietta in a quiet voice. “And I despise your arrogance. You will ‘decide on a wife.’ What if the young lady will not have you?”
“My dear, Miss Sandford, there is no one who would refuse my fortune… except perhaps yourself.”
“And since you do not want me for a wife, you see no hindrance?”
He leaned forward in the darkness. “But I did ask you to marry me,” he said slowly. “Or had you forgotten.”
“That, my lord,” she said primly, “was only because you felt you had compromised me after you had been making love to the ghost of Lucinda.”
“Damn Lucinda. Ah, I had forgot. I am supposed to have driven the fair Lucinda mad. Well, for your information, that charming young lady was introduced to cocaine by her elderly lover and when I last saw her she was completely out of her wits.”
“Poor Lucinda,” whispered Henrietta.
“And poor Henrietta,” he said, dismissing the subject of his ex-love with seeming callousness. “No one to love you and no one to protect you. You could do far worse than to be married to me.”
Henrietta fell silent. If only he would take her in his arms. The silence lengthened and then, to her fury, she heard the sounds of heavy breathing from the other comer of the carriage. His lordship had fallen fast asleep. The infuriating man could go to Brighton for all she cared. She would learn to live without him. Since the Season began, she had been unable to notice any other man. Well, she would begin to change.
With this firm resolve, she made his sleepy lordship a chilly adieu at Brook Street and escaped to the privacy of her bedroom for a hearty cry.
Chapter Eleven
The Season was at last finished. Marriages, as the top ten thousand very well knew, were not made in heaven. They were made in the overheated saloons and ballrooms of London. The exhausted debutantes who had failed to snare a mate returned to their country homes with their vast wardrobes to recharge their energies for the next battle. The successful ones also rested like exhausted warriors after a long campaign and left the worrying of wedding expenses to their parents.
The hardier spirits followed the Prince Regent to Brighton to resume their military tactics by laying siege to every available bachelor heart in the Assembly Rooms of the now famous seaside resort.
Henrietta had joined the lists.
Beau Reckford should discover that he was not the only pebble on the beach and that elegant gentleman was considerably irritated to find that Henrietta never seemed to be at home. And unless he presented himself very early at the assemblies at the Ship Inn, he found that her dance card was always full.
Henrietta and Miss Scattersworth had rented a house on the Marine Parade which had been vacated at the last minute by an impecunious lord who had lost his rent and lease at the faro table.
Henrietta had never seen the sea before. As the heavy travelling coach had rumbled down the Lewes Road and she had caught her first glimpse of the endless stretch of blue water sparkling under the summer sun, a little of the ache in her heart lessened.
She had decided that she would never love anyone else as deeply and completely as she loved the Beau. But if she should have to settle for half measures, then let it be with some other gentleman. There were many who would be willing to marry her for her money. Henrietta had become worldly enough to not object to that idea. Were the impoverished gentleman complacent and kind and comfortable enough, then she would be happy to repair his fortune in exchange for his name. Children would be adequate compensation for any lack of love, decided Henrietta.
Having firmly made up her mind to put Beau Reckford out of her mind and having firmly convinced herself that she was only in Brighton to look for a suitable husband, she settled back to enjoy her holiday. The longing and pain she felt when she saw Lord Reckford’s handsome face in the ballroom had become such a habit that by the close of the Season, Henrietta had come to accept it the way one accepts the pain of perpetual illness.
For his part, Lord Reckford decided to ignore her in turn. He had received many rebuffs from the vicar’s sister during the first week in Brighton. Enough was enough. If that was all the thanks he was to receive for all his condescension and flattering attention to a little provincial, then to hell with her!
He drank, gambled and flirted as he had never done before and felt immeasurably bored.
His sister, Lady Ann Courtney, anxiously watched him. She had come to like Henrietta and had hoped that her wild brother would settle down and set up his nursery. She watched his haggard face across the breakfast table one morning with disapproval.
“Really, Guy,” she sighed. “You are getting slightly too old to go on in this ramshackle manner. We have only been in Brighton for a week and already tales of your dissipation are coming to my ears.”
“Don’t r
efine too much on it,” he said lazily. “The old tabbies who come around here would ferret out scandal about a bishop.”
The curtains of the breakfast room window were drawn back affording an excellent view of the Parade. Henrietta Sandford floated past on the arm of a military gentleman. She seemed unusually animated and gay. Behind her trailed Miss Scattersworth, for once unaccompanied. The spinster’s hair under her cap showed faint glints of green. The re-dying of her hair had not been entirely successful. A mischievous breeze carried the infectious trill of Henrietta’s laughter through the open windows to Lord Reckford’s jaundiced ears. He cursed under his breath and threw down his napkin.
His sister regarded him anxiously. “Guy… I had hoped that you were fixed with Miss Sandford. You are not, by any chance, still hankering after poor Lucinda?”
Her brother regarded her with surprise. “I declare I had not thought of Lucinda in some time. Is she still alive?”
“Only just,” said Ann dryly. “But her brother seems to be in a fair way to wasting her fortune.”
He gave her a startled look. “Are you sure Lucinda had a fortune? She was always asking me for money and expensive trinkets. And I thought her sudden interest in the Marquis was because his estate was more considerable than mine.”
“Oh, yes. Lucinda was greedy. Like a greedy little child. But she had quite a considerable fortune.”
“But what has that got to do with her brother…?” Lord Reckford looked at her with a sudden dawning glimmer of understanding.
“Well, of course, Guy. Your wits must be wandering. When Lucinda was put in the madhouse and all the papers signed, her parents being dead, her brother naturally took control of her estate. Why, Guy! What on earth is the matter? You have gone quite white!”