A Marchioness Below Stairs

by Alissa Baxter

  “I will never marry you!”

  “Ah, but you will, my sweet. Your reputation will be sadly compromised after a sea passage without a female chaperone. You will be delighted to attain some sort of respectability once we disembark.”

  Isabel stared at him in horror. What on earth was she to do?

  “Come closer, my sweet. We can keep each other warm.” His face twisted in a leer. “I was cursing this damned weather, but now I am grateful for it.”

  “Stay away from me! Or I will scratch your eyes out.”

  He laughed and leant back against the squabs. “As you will.” He closed his eyes, before opening one eyelid, and saying, “You do know you cannot hold out on me forever, my sweet?”

  “Don’t call me ‘my sweet’. You are a revolting man.” She reached to open the carriage door, but he pulled her away.

  “Not so fast.” He kept a tight grip on her arm, and laughed. “You’re a little spitfire, my sweet. I’m going to find great enjoyment with you.”

  Isabel tried to move away from him but he kept her away from the window. “I would not draw attention to yourself, Lady Axbridge. If you attempt to do so, I will bind your hands together,” he said in his hateful voice.

  Isabel swallowed but didn’t respond. She could not afford to have her hands bound. Perhaps, when the carriage slowed, she could wrench herself away from him, open the door, and leap out.

  But the carriage kept up its steady pace, and although it did slow down occasionally, Mr Wetherby did not release her arm. Suddenly, the coach came to a complete halt, and Isabel whipped the glove off her hand, and, reaching across to him, she scratched his cheek, drawing blood.

  “Ow!” he exclaimed, releasing her.

  She took the opportunity of his diversion to wrench the door open, but Mr Wetherby pulled her back and, leaning over her, slammed the door shut.

  “I told you I would bind your hands together,” he said. “I hate to waste a perfectly good cravat, but needs must.”

  He took off his cravat and tied her wrists firmly. Tears pricked Isabel’s eyes. It would be impossible to escape now.

  Traffic was busier than usual on the streets of London as its residents attempted to go about their daily business after being housebound for so many days, and it took a fair amount of time to get out of the city. But once they were free of the London traffic, and out on the open road, the coach picked up speed dramatically, and lurched along the bumpy roads.

  Isabel started to feel ill.

  “I – I suffer from travel sickness, Mr Wetherby. Please stop the coach.”

  “Try another one, my sweet. I am not so easily taken in as all that,” he said, pulling her closer to him.

  “Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.”

  The carriage lurched sideways, and she raised her bound hands to her mouth. But it was too late. She was sick all over him.

  “Damn it! This is revolting! It’s all over my clothes –”

  He pulled away, and banged against the roof of the coach with his cane. They came to an abrupt halt, and Mr Wetherby, with an expression of revulsion on his face, climbed from the coach, and shouted at the coachman. “Get my trunk out. I need a change of clothing. And stand guard over this door while I change.”

  The coachman peered into the carriage with a bemused expression, as he walked past the window, and Isabel sat quietly inside, spent after having been so violently ill. The bindings around her wrists were uncomfortably tight. They cut into her wrists, and she winced in pain.

  After a long interval, Mr Wetherby climbed back into the coach in a fresh change of clothing, and said, with a disgusted look in her direction, “Now don’t be sick again. Of all the…” He shook his head, and retreated to the far corner of the coach.

  “I would advise you to leave me on the side of the road.”

  “Ha – do you believe me to be a numbskull? I have instructed my coachman to drive a trifle slower.”

  “I am afraid a trifle slower will not do, Mr Wetherby. He will have to drive a lot slower if you wish me not to be sick again.”

  He threw her a furious glance, but didn’t stop the coach in order to issue another instruction. And although the carriage travelled along at a more moderate pace, it was still not slow enough to prevent Isabel growing nauseated once again, and within a few minutes, she was sick again all over the seat.

  Mr Wetherby muttered a savage word Isabel had never heard before, and banged on the carriage roof. It drew to a halt.

  “Get out,” he said, white-lipped. “You should have got sick into that damned basket of yours, instead of all over my coach.”

  He opened the carriage door, and grabbing her arm roughly, he pulled her from the coach and led her towards a convenient rock on the side of the road, where he seated her.

  Isabel needed to think. She had to get free of him before they reached Bristol, but wretched, cold, weak and shivering from the after-effects of the motion sickness, she could do nothing but pray until her nausea abated.

  “Clean up this mess!” Mr Wetherby ordered his coachman, before he strode to the head of one of his horses, who had taken fright at his strident voice.

  “How long do you think you will need before we can continue?” he snapped.

  “A fair while,” Isabel said. “When the roads are bad like this, I can only travel at a snail-like pace.”

  “How very convenient for you,” he said, viewing her through narrowed eyes.

  “I am not shamming, Mr Wetherby. I have been afflicted with travel sickness my entire life.”

  He grunted, but said nothing more, merely muttered viciously under his breath.

  When the coachman passed her with a rag in his hands, Isabel rose on wobbly knees, embarrassed that the man was required to clean the seat. “I will do that!”

  “Sit down!” Mr Wetherby snarled.

  She was about to argue when she heard the sound of horses’ hooves in the distance. Mr Wetherby stopped muttering, suddenly on the alert.

  “Hurry up, man!” he yelled. “Another coach is coming.”

  Isabel darted a quick glance at him, and then she scrambled to her feet and started to run down the road. But with her hands still bound, she could not lift her skirts, and Mr Wetherby caught up with her quickly. He gripped her arms so painfully that she cried out.

  “Get back inside. Now!” he commanded, shoving her in the direction of the coach.

  But he was too late. Another coach-and-four swept around the bend in the road, and drew up beside them. The carriage door opened, and Mr Bateman stepped out onto the road.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  He held a pistol in his hands, and after a brief glance at Isabel to ensure she was unharmed, pointed the weapon at Mr Wetherby. “Get into my coach, Isabel!”

  Isabel sprang to her feet, hurried to the carriage, and with the coachman’s assistance climbed inside. From the safety of the plush interior, she saw Mr Bateman and his coachman advance towards Mr Wetherby, who held his hands up in the air. At a nod from Mr Bateman, the coachman bound Mr Wetherby’s hands behind his back, and forced him into his own carriage.

  Mr Bateman handed his pistol to his servant, who trained it on Mr Wetherby’s coachman who stood stock still with his mouth agape. Then Mr Bateman strode back to his own coach. He wrenched the door open, and Isabel gulped. The grim expression on his face did not bode well for her.

  “He did not harm you?” he snapped.

  Isabel shook her head. “Aside from my travel sickness, and these –” She held up her bound wrists, “I am unharmed.”

  Mr Bateman frowned and leaned forward to unknot the cravat. “Why did you visit Wetherby House on your own? Of all the idiotish things to do!”

  “I was not being idiotish! I thought Mr Wetherby had already left for Antigua, and when I found his missing papers, I decided to return them to Mrs Wetherby. How did you find me?”

  “I arrived just after you left, caught Simmonds at the door as she returned, and she told me everyt
hing. I hurried to catch you at the Wetherbys, but the man-servant swore he had no idea where you’d gone. For a moment, I thought I’d lost you, then my coachman spotted Wetherby’s carriage, and we gave chase, although we got held up due to a dreadful snarl in the traffic. It’s a good thing you mentioned the other evening that Wetherby planned to sail from Bristol, otherwise I wouldn’t have known which road to take.”

  “You seem very angry,” Isabel said in a small voice.

  “I am very angry,” he said, finally managing to untie the cravat from around her wrists. “But let us not discuss this now. You will return home in my carriage, and I will deal with Wetherby. Do not inform anyone of what has happened. Do not even speak to your mother and your stepfather about this.”

  Isabel inclined her head, and he continued: “This is a very delicate situation and I will arrange things suitably, but I need you to hold your tongue. I will be out of town for a while, my dear. I am not worried about Cherny speaking out of turn, but I cannot take the risk that your mother will find out what has happened, as she may say something. My coachman will return you home and you must enter the house as if nothing has happened. Make some excuse for your long absence. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  He nodded curtly and turned to stride back to the other coach. Isabel leaned back against the seat, her limbs trembling. She had never seen Mr Bateman so angry before. It was as if he had become a completely different person.

  She rested her head against the velvet upholstery, massaging feeling back into her stiffened fingers. She dreaded the journey home, but Mr Bateman must have instructed his coachman to drive back to Town very slowly because she managed the return journey without being sick again.

  When the coachman drew up in front of Chernock House, it was growing dark already. The coachman opened the carriage door for her, and helped her down, before climbing back into the coach box and driving away. Isabel waited until he had disappeared from sight, before entering the house, and hurrying upstairs to her bedchamber.

  “My lady!” her maid exclaimed. “I have been so worried. Where have you been?”

  “Mr Wetherby was at Wetherby House and he forced me into his carriage,” she said haltingly.

  “The villain! I knew something was wrong. But Mr Bateman said he would get you back. He’s a good man, my lady.”

  “Indeed.” Isabel sank onto her bed, her limbs shaky as reaction to her ordeal set in. “Please send me up some tea, Simmonds. Is my mother at home?”

  “She returned home a couple of hours ago, and retired to her bedchamber with the headache.”

  “So – so she doesn’t know I’ve been gone?”

  “No, my lady. Mr Bateman told me not to speak of it, unless you weren’t home by this evening.”

  “Thank you, Simmonds. I do not wish you to say anything about this matter, either. You understand?”

  “Of course, my lady. I won’t say a word.”

  * * *

  The cold northerly wind which cleared the fog also brought a change in weather. That night, snow started to fall heavily in Portman Square, and when Isabel woke the next morning, it lay thick on the cobbles outside.

  She poked her nose out the front door and, dressed in numerous layers, and with a fur cap hugging her head, ventured as far as the Square garden, with Peter following a few paces behind.

  The air was laden with particles of freezing water, which attached themselves to objects before crystallising. Thus the blades of grass on the lawn had been converted into thick stalagmites, which, although pretty, were not conducive for an enjoyable stroll in the garden.

  Still, eager for a breath of fresh air, Isabel strolled at a brisk pace along the perimeter path of the garden, before hurrying back to the house once more. The thought of being housebound yet again filled her with dismay, particularly as she had no idea how long Mr Bateman would be out of town. Taking some exercise, however, had cleared her head, and she determined to walk every day to vary the monotony of a day trapped indoors.

  It continued to snow steadily for another week. Towards the middle of the month, George informed her that the Thames was so encumbered by ice that navigation on the river was scarcely possible, particularly on the upper side of London Bridge where masses of ice and snow had accumulated, preventing barges and boats passing up the river.

  By this time, Isabel had settled into a kind of numb paralysis. She had not received so much as a note from Mr Bateman. Surely, if he were in love with her, he would make some effort to get in touch with her? What made it even worse was that George had not heard from him either.

  “I believe Bateman must have left London, my dear,” he said, one morning at the breakfast table. “The bad weather must be preventing him from returning, seeing as how we have had no communication from the Northern and Western roads for several days.”

  “Yes – the last time I saw him he told me he may need to leave London for a while,” Isabel replied.

  “Is that why he hasn’t called on you, my love?” her mother said. “I have been wondering, but I did not wish to pry. I know the weather is atrocious at the moment, but Mr Bateman mentioned to George that he planned to call on you shortly after Christmas.”

  Isabel clutched onto her mother’s comment as a straw of hope, but as one lonely day followed the next, the optimism drained out of her. Over and over in her mind, she played the scene of their last meeting, and his patent fury at her behaviour.

  Perhaps she had been mistaken in thinking he loved her?

  Her mother and Cousin Maria’s sympathetic glances were hard to bear, and Isabel eventually spent a large portion of her day in her bedchamber, keeping her mind off her lost love by working on a new anti-slavery pamphlet, this one aimed at the grocers in the city who stocked Caribbean sugar.

  She had successfully spoken to their local grocer, who had agreed to stop selling the slave-grown produce, but she knew a number of his fellow shop-keepers did not see anything wrong with stocking the sugar, and she hoped her pamphlet would illustrate to them the inherent bitterness behind the sweet product their customers so enjoyed.

  The days drifted by, and the snow continued to fall, and by Monday, 31st January, it was reported that the Thames had become a complete field of ice between London and Blackfriars bridges.

  George announced a few days later that there was to be a Frost Fair on the river. “The Thames has frozen solid,” he said as they sat down to dine. “The watermen have set up signs saying the river is now safe to cross.”

  Isabel stared at him in amazement. “Frozen solid? Is that possible?”

  “Indeed, my dear. It has happened on numerous occasions in the past, though not recently. The last time it happened was in 1789. I remember my father speaking of it when I was a boy.”

  Isabel accepted a glass of wine. “What happens during a Frost Fair?”

  “I believe there will be ice skating, and booths are set up, and food and drink is sold.” He offered her mother a dish of roasted pigeon, then resumed their conversation. “When the river freezes over, the watermen can no longer earn their living by rowing people across the river, so they, and the lightermen who transport goods on the Thames, set up a Frost Fair, and charge hawkers and their customers for entrance onto the ice.”

  “It would be exhilarating to go ice skating.” Isabel sat up straighter. Perhaps the exercise would take her mind off her troubles. “I even have a pair of skates in one of my trunks.”

  “I am sure the Frost Fair must be frequented by all sorts of common people, my dear,” Cousin Maria said. “It would be better to go skating on the Serpentine.”

  “But who could I go with?” Isabel said.

  There was a sudden silence at the table, and Isabel, looking around at the discomfited expressions on her relatives’ faces, felt a sudden spurt of rage towards Marcus Bateman. How could he have raised her hopes – and clearly the hopes of her family – as he had, only to disappear for a whole month?

&
nbsp; It was unconscionable of him to have hinted that he was about to offer for her, only to vanish into thin air. Perhaps it had all been a game to him – to see if he could make her care for him. What a great challenge that must have been for a rake! And like a fool, she had fallen head over ears in love with him, and given her heart into his keeping, only for him to trample all over it.

  She had spoken openly to him about how she valued her independence and how she had no plans to give it up, and he must have viewed her as a potential conquest – a woman to be wooed and won to satisfy his conceit – but nothing more.

  He was a scoundrel, he was villain, he was a cheat… perhaps he was dead? The thought made the breath stop in her chest, before she exhaled slowly. If he had been in an accident or hurt, surely they would have received word of it by now?

  She fought a strong desire to burst into tears. But instead of giving way to her emotions, she took a gulp of air. Languishing at home was not doing her any good. She needed something to take her mind off her unhappy thoughts. Attending the Frost Fair seemed like an excellent idea.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  When Isabel asked George the next day if he would take her to the fair, he looked perturbed. “But, my dear, this type of fair is – not for ladies. I have heard reports of great revelry on the river.”

  Isabel eyed him speculatively, but said nothing. However, when Simmonds told her the next day that Watkins had heard an account of an elephant being led over the ice below Blackfriars Bridge, Isabel set out again to persuade her stepfather.

  “Surely with your escort, George, I need not worry about any undesirable persons who may be at the fair?”

  He looked doubtful. “I heard a report this afternoon that the ice cracked above London Bridge, and that a man and two boys were carried away on a large piece through one of the arches.”

  Isabel gasped. “Did they survive?”

  “They did. They lay down flat on the ice and were rescued by some Billingsgate fishermen.”

  “Well, no harm was done then,” she said, with a dismissive shrug. “Beside,” she continued flippantly, “if an elephant can cross the Thames alongside Blackfriars Bridge without mishap, I am sure the river can bear our weight.”