The Dutiful Daughter

by Vanessa Gray

Stoddard set a fast pace, in mingled anger and resentment. He had looked back once and seen another gentleman picking up the girl that he himself had stopped to help. How had she done it? He had no way of getting rid of the wretched woman except by depositing her at her destination. And the sooner the better.

  Behind him, the occupants of the other vehicle were enjoying themselves. Sophy, full of excitement at the accident and their rescue, was hard to silence. Her audience could not easily escape, and she proceeded to explain to Sir Richard about her good friend Emma Partridge. “Her mother — you know, Lady Partridge — plans to go to Bath. She says it is not as fashionable as Brighton, but on the other hand she says it is more distinguished. Lady Partridge and Emma will be gone for a month or two. I think I’ll die while they’re gone, for you must know that Emma is my great friend.”

  Richard said, “I agree with Lady Partridge. The Regent’s vicinity is apt to be a little stimulating.”

  Sophy said, “Do you think so? I should like above all things to see the Prince Regent. I understand he is so gross that he can’t walk without help. Is that right?”

  Richard, somewhat absently, agreed that the Prince Regent’s weight was indeed a problem.

  Sophy continued to prattle about Emma and her plans for her trip, and Lady Partridge’s plan to take all her own linen, as well as everything else she would need, as though she were removing forever.

  With Sophy’s artless prattle, and Richard’s pleasure at knowing that Chloe was with him, the time passed swiftly.

  They pulled up at last before the tooth drawer, and found Julian Stoddard with his hands full.

  Julian had made the trip in a short time, but Mrs. Field had not had sufficient motive so far to get down from the chaise and up the stairs to the rooms over the drapery shop. Chloe jumped lightly down from Richard’s chaise and ran to where Cook and Mr. Stoddard seemed bound together forever. Standing on the sidewalk, she looked up at Bess, whose woebegone face gave mute evidence of the ordeal she had just passed. Not one to like a fast ride, in the open curricle the ground had passed far too swiftly beneath her half-closed eyes.

  By dint of sheer authority, Chloe got the sufferer to the sidewalk and then bent her efforts to thanking Julian Stoddard. Richard, silently, came to stand unobtrusively beside Chloe. Julian received Chloe’s thanks grimly, and hardly replied. He left quickly, and Chloe turned to Richard.

  “Are you all right?” said Richard.

  “Yes, I am fine, but I do wonder how I will get Cook back to the manor. I cannot impose further on Mr. Stoddard.”

  “Especially since he will take care not to be close enough to be imposed upon,” Richard pointed out. He smiled then, in a conspiratorial fashion, and suddenly Chloe smiled back. The mischievous dimple appeared on her left cheekbone, and she said, “He truly didn’t like it much, did he?”

  Richard said, “The best thing is to have Rothwell send the coach, and I will see to that.”

  “But you have no groom?”

  “No, but I will send a messenger from the inn.”

  Chloe looked doubtful, and Richard told her, “Don’t worry. I will not leave you alone in town.”

  Thus reassured, Chloe and Sophy dealt with the patient. For the time being her hands were full, but she thought how grateful she was to Richard. When he came along, it seemed as though all trouble smoothed out, all obstacles were removed from her path.

  Later, Chloe tried to forget the next hour. Cook was miserable, stubborn, and in severe pain. But the tooth drawer, a mincing little man, was possessed of surprising strength, and was more than a match for Cook. Sophy, avoiding the inner office at all costs, stood at the window and favored her audience with a running commentary on the sights she saw below. Finally Chloe bade her to be silent, and Sophy subsided. Sophy commented, “I suppose you’d rather hear Cook moan than hear me talk.” But her grumbling quieted, and there was an ominous silence from the inner room.

  It was perhaps half an hour later when Mr. Tully came out, wiping his hands. “I’ve given her an opiate, which will keep her quiet until you can get her home. Do you have more laudanum?”

  Chloe and Mr. Tully discussed the opiate, and the small vial was refilled. Tucking it carefully away, Chloe said, “I wonder if we could wait here until the coach from Rothwell Manor comes.”

  Sophy, with a tight little smile, said, “The coach is waiting downstairs.”

  Chloe said, “For how long? You didn’t tell me?”

  Sophy said, “You bade me be silent.”

  Chloe said, “You wretched child. Here I’ve been worrying how we would go on.”

  Cook was more dead weight than cooperative. Richard’s message had been comprehensive enough so that not only did the coachman come, but two footmen to help with Cook. Once stowed inside the coach, with Bess and Sophy beside her, Chloe looked up to see Richard beside her. “I came to see you on your way.”

  Chloe said, “I can’t thank you enough. I do not know what I would do without you.”

  Richard thought, it is my hope you never will have to, but he only smiled. He saw them off trundling down the street and turning on the road that would take them back to Rothwell Manor. Richard, with much to think about, decided to look up Julian Stoddard. He had a few things to say to him, but he did not readily find him, and soon dismissed him from his mind. If Stoddard was a man of any sensibility, he would have left town already.

  10

  That fine weather was the last for some time. The rains set in, and bade fair to stay. Chloe gave Julian Stoddard no more than a passing thought. He had come along when she needed him, but no man of humanitarian impulses could have left Cook moaning on the grassy bank. Chloe felt no unusual obligation to him.

  As a matter of fact, the household demands filled her days. Her legacy seemed very far off, and since life was proceeding in its accustomed channels, she was content to let it be.

  Julian Stoddard, however, was still in Kent, and he had not forgotten Chloe’s fortune. He congratulated himself that he was one of the very few who knew that Chloe was now an heiress. But he was still sulking at what he considered Chloe’s malicious scheming. How had it come about that, instead of helping Chloe in her suffering, he had been saddled with a fat, moaning cook?

  He could not quite put his finger on Chloe’s fault, but he believed that she made a fool of him. Only the knowledge that he, more often than not, had pockets to let kept him here. Besides, the tab at the inn here was far cheaper than his lodgings in London. Another advantage was that the bailiffs did not know where he was.

  While Julian worked off his sulks, life at Rothwell Manor continued. In spite of the teeming rain, Sir Richard was able to ride over to Rothwell Manor at least for short periods. Even though he did not always see Chloe, he could not stay away. Sometimes Chloe appeared, and his day turned into sunshine. But more often than not Lady Rothwell received him, sitting on a small divan and not bothering to rise when he came in.

  She claimed to be working on an embroidered screen. Richard could see no progress on it. The same half-finished fish swam in fragmentary waves, and although his interest in the screen was cursory, yet he found it hard to find another subject in which both he and Lady Rothwell had the same degree of interest. On his third visit, when the weather was still lowering and rain fell at times from the leaden sky, Lady Rothwell beamed at him, saying, “How glad we are that you are back in the neighborhood. I vow it would be a dreary day without your visit.”

  She turned to Lydia and complained, “I wonder whether Chloe could make an effort to keep my cup of chocolate filled. I hate to bother the servants, but Chloe could certainly do me this small kindness.”

  Lydia, ignoring their visitor, said fretfully, “Chloe might hire another servant or two. She has enough money now to make things easier for all of us.”

  Edward, entering to greet Richard, objected. “I will hire all the servants necessary. I’m sure Chloe does more than her share at keeping the household running smoothly.”


  Lydia said, fretfully, “You said we can’t afford a London Season, so I thought we were poor.”

  Edward, horrified, shot an apologetical glance at Richard and frowned at Lydia. Richard, amused, knew that Edward wished for his absence, but he was enjoying himself, and there was always the chance that Chloe might come in.

  Edward, mortified at Lydia’s want of conduct, said so. “I have become more and more appalled,” said Edward heavily, “at your behavior. You must gain a little more decorum before I ever agree to let you go to London. You would be a disgrace to us all.”

  Lydia, her cheeks flushed, rose awkwardly to her feet, spilling Lady Rothwell’s embroidery silks all over the floor. Lady Rothwell cried out, but Lydia fled the room. She did not bother to bid farewell to Richard, but only muttered broken little phrases, and Richard was quite sure he had heard the words “getting even.”

  What a household! His dear Chloe must have a harder time than he had thought. Yet there was no complaint from her.

  Lady Rothwell said, comfortably, to Richard, “You see, Sir Richard, we do not stand on ceremony with you. You are such an old friend, it is as though you were part of the family.”

  Richard was conscious of a wish that they did stand on more ceremony with him.

  She turned the subject neatly. Coyly, she began to tease him. “Soon we will have a new lady at Davenant Hall, I suppose?”

  Appalled, Richard’s wits left him. He was considering the unpleasantness of Chloe’s existence in a household of people with whom she had so little in common. His wishes overleaped his circumstances, so that he was thinking of Chloe away from Rothwell Manor and safely installed at Davenant Hall. Richard agreed absently. “Yes, and soon!”

  Chloe led a life here of some strictness, and Richard knew that there were few, if any, books for her to read. She had the burden of the household, while her stepmother did nothing. She was at the beck and call of Lady Rothwell, and was exposed to Francis Hensley and Julian Stoddard, as well, as suitors.

  Eventually, still bemused, and without regard for the cat he had inadvertently let out among the pigeons, Richard took his leave. He had satisfied Lady Rothwell’s question about a new lady at Davenant Hall, and did not realize that Lady Rothwell’s thoughts ran along entirely different channels from his. Lady Rothwell was considering the exact wording of her letter to her sister, in London. For once, Lady Rothwell would have the latest gossip. Sir Richard was certainly going to offer for someone, and in a very short time.

  While Richard would not have bothered about the gossip passed on to Mrs. Hensley, he would have been dismayed to realize that his words, spoken absently, would have been relayed to Chloe before he was down the drive. “So you see,” said Lady Rothwell, “that Sir Richard will not be with us very long. He is, after all, a man of some elegance, and London is his proper habitat.”

  Chloe, taken aback by the reminder that Richard’s marriage would be arranged soon when she had been almost able to forget it, told herself once more that he was only her Great Friend. She tried to bolster her own spirits without success. It was the weather — the gloomy miserable leaden weather!

  The next day the weather turned fine, in that clear freshness that comes after heavy rain. But Chloe was still in the mopes, and this time she could not blame it on the weather.

  Lady Rothwell, finally stirring herself, called Francis. Closing the door behind him, she told him point-blank her concern. “I do not see any signs of a betrothal between you and Chloe,” she said at once. “Have you come to an understanding?”

  Francis, his worst fears realized, found that his tongue would not obey him. Instead, he was forced to shake his head.

  “I had hoped to see more signs of progress by now, Francis.” Francis, at a loss, cast his eyes wildly around looking for escape. While all the world might see Lady Rothwell as an indolent, selfish woman, calling her servants or her family to do the slightest task for her, and moreover not overburdened with intellect, Francis, who had known her since his childhood, saw her as a firebreathing dragon.

  He had strong and vivid memories of Lady Rothwell descending upon him when all he wanted was to be left alone — and forcing him against his will to do one thing or another. While his method of existing with his mother was simply to move out and take rooms of his own, yet he felt his bones turn to jelly when Lady Rothwell spoke to him. It was beyond reason, he knew, and yet there it was. He had no defense against his aunt.

  She, dimly aware of this, pursued her advantage. “I shall plan an outing,” she announced, “for you and Chloe. I think a day in the open air, to take advantage of this beautiful weather, will be the thing. I shall send Edward along, to preserve the proprieties, you know, but I shall expect you to remember your duty to your family and to yourself. That inheritance, I’ve told you before, must on no account leave the family. There is no reason why Chloe’s money should go to enrich some total stranger.” Francis stared dumbly at his hands. But Lady Rothwell was not finished. “And what possessed you to tell Julian Stoddard about Chloe’s fortune? I am in half a mind to refuse him admittance to the house.”

  Francis stammered in dismay. “You can’t do that! Not the thing!”

  “Well, perhaps we’ve seen the last of him anyway. But I expect tomorrow to have some news to write to your mother.”

  While Lady Rothwell’s strenuous representations to Francis were designed to fill his backbone with starch and impel him to ardent wooing, her efforts fell short of the mark. She was not working with malleable material. Although Francis, in the ordinary way, rushed to do her bidding, yet she had pressed him too far. Instead of making Francis more determined to press his suit upon Chloe, the result of Lady Rothwell’s remarks was simply to make Francis more distressed, more inarticulate than ever.

  He had the strong feeling that he was akin to a rabbit caught in a trap, and even a rabbit has a wish to escape, he told himself. Francis toyed with the idea of escaping back to London, but the same paralysis that kept him from offering for Chloe also kept him from summoning his chaise and his valet and removing himself from his aunt’s vicinity.

  Lady Rothwell, stirring herself unusually, planned the outing. There was a particularly fine view over the Vale of Kent — “not that horrid crypt the vicar discovered!” — and Lydia and Sophy were enthusiastic, for their lives were so uneventful that even a carriage ride and picnic stood out as a high point of pleasure. But Lady Rothwell also insisted that Edward leave his books and accounts and go along. For she said, in the privacy of the book room, “You know that if Francis and Chloe go on an outing, someone must go along to preserve the proprieties.”

  Edward protested. “They’ve been playfellows since the cradle. What folly do you think Francis could come up with now?”

  Lady Rothwell, smirking, said, “Chloe may consider Francis her playfellow, but his status has changed. He is a suitor, and therefore you must go along.”

  Edward, from long experience, realized that when his mother was set, the easiest course was to accede to her demands.

  Midway through the next morning, the picnic outing started down the drive. Never were participants on what was, after all, supposed to be a gay sight-seeing occasion, more glum. The chaise, now fully repaired, held Chloe and her two sisters. Edward rode beside them, and Francis on the other flank. A dog cart with the picnic supplies had gone on ahead.

  Edward’s mouth was drawn, reflecting the recent report of his farm manager, who wished to cull out certain sheep and replace them with a new strain. Edward disliked innovation, and his interview with his agent had become somewhat heated.

  Now he was thinking of the problem, weighing advantages and disadvantages in his thorough, painstaking way. On the other side of the carriage rode Francis Hensley. It would be hard for anyone to read Francis’s thoughts, and it was quite likely that there were none. He liked Chloe well enough, but he was not ready to be leg-shackled. Yet he saw that dire fate approaching, and there was nothing he could do about it. If his Aunt Rothwe
ll told him to jump off a cliff, he feared that he would oblige her.

  They reached the end of the drive and were turning away from town when Edward caught sight of Richard riding toward them.

  Greetings exchanged, Edward said, “Why don’t you come along with us? There is plenty of food, and the weather is fine, for a change.”

  Edward wanted company in his enforced attendance at the picnic. Edward often spoke of Richard’s elevated conversation, and faced with the prospect of Francis all afternoon, hailed Richard as one might, on hands and knees on the desert, greet an oasis.

  Richard, holding such an outing in aversion, stopped to speak to Chloe. To his surprise, Chloe did not meet his eyes. Instead, she focused on a point somewhere beyond his left ear and spoke civilly, but not warmly.

  Richard was daunted. What’s happened now? he thought, and sensibly dismissing speculation until he knew more, he changed his mind instantly and accepted Edward’s invitation.

  The picnic spot was not more than an hour’s leisurely drive away. The prospect from the elevation was indeed fine, and the servants, having arrived before, were already laying out the cloths and cushions and unpacking the picnic hampers.

  Richard coaxed Chloe to stroll with him to a vantage point somewhat apart, and said, very kindly, “What has happened to put you in the mopes? Don’t tell me Cook has another toothache?”

  Chloe smiled slightly, and said, “No, she’s quite well.”

  Richard forbore to ask her any more, for he sensed her distress. He said, simply, “You must know, Chloe, that I am at your service. Whatever I can do to help you, I will do.”

  Chloe thanked him, but bit back the sharp retort that would have explained all to him. She could not take advantage of his kind offer when he was all but betrothed to somebody else. He was her good friend, but she must not lean on him. She must learn to stand on her own feet, even though, since Richard had come back, she was more and more conscious of a strong temptation to throw herself upon his chest and unburden herself of all her troubles.