Miss Delacourt Has Her Day

by Heidi Ashworth

  Now that she and Grandaunt were at Hyde Park, there was no turning back. The teeming mass of carriages all jostling for position along the Serpentine Road prevented them from moving an inch. Because the fashionable hour to see and be seen at the barrier to the park was four o’clock in the afternoon, the race had been planned for an early hour so as disrupt as few pleasure-seekers as possible. Yet, as she gazed about her, Ginny was persuaded she had never seen such a crush in the park at any hour of the day. Whether or not Lady Derby was among them, Ginny was too nervous to ascertain. The thought of encountering her made Ginny feel slightly ill, and she kept her gaze mostly in her lap or on the ground before her so as not to mistakenly fall under Lady Derby’s notice.

  “Well!” Grandaunt exclaimed. “If this race does not commence immediately, we shall be brown as figs!”

  Ginny’s constant surveillance of the road where the race was to be held had so far yielded no clues that a race was to occur at all. “I can see that Anthony has not arrived, but what of his opponent? Is he here?”

  Grandaunt shook her head. “You do not properly apprehend the situation, my dear. Anthony is to race against time, not an actual opponent. The fastest time to be achieved by anyone is slightly more than nineteen miles per hour in a chaise and four; therefore, he will need to do the nineteen miles in less than fiftynine minutes. It is quite impossible! The record has been held for over fifty years. Meanwhile, where is he? I have no desire to be pinned like a butterfly under glass a moment longer than need be”

  “Nineteen miles?” Ginny exclaimed. “He will be out of view within a few minutes’ time. Why are so many people gathered to watch an event that will go mostly unseen?”

  “Allow me to explain,” came a familiar voice from the carriage to their left.

  It was Lord Avery, a wholly disagreeable circumstance, as it could only mean that Lucinda was not far off. Ginny supposed Grandaunt would utter the usual greeting, but the old dame looked as if she had just swallowed a fly. Ginny realized it would be up to her to do the pretty. She peered into the neighboring carriage and saw that Lucinda was indeed in attendance. “How good of you to enlighten us, my lord, and good day to you, Lady Avery,” she said with a sinking heart, knowing it would be bellows to mend from here on out.

  “Oooooh, Ginny, you must be in raptures!” Lucinda said with a squeal. “Lord Crenshaw is to duel on horseback for your honor! I have made Eustace promise he will do the same for me one day, only he must wear a blindfold to make it even more spectacular!”

  “My flower,” Lord Avery interjected, “as I have explained more than thrice, he is not to duel, nor will he be on horseback. There will be horses, yes, but it is merely a race”

  “A race?” Lucinda screeched. “You mean to say there will be no shooting? What is romantical about a mere race? You have dragged me from my comfortable chaise to watch a carriage race?” she cried, pummeling the velvet collar of her husband’s powder-blue coat with a rapid volley of her tiny fists.

  Lord Avery sighed and attempted a smile. “That is not precisely what happened, dearest” Ginny could smell the sharp burst of perspiration that was beading his brow; it was clear that marriage to Lucinda was beginning to pall a bit. “As I recall, my flower, I insisted you should stay home and rest up from whatever indisposition it is that ails you today, while I came here on my own”

  Lucinda sniffed and leaned back, waving her handkerchief in front of her face. “I should never have come! The heat is unendurable, and the flies…! Why, I have never been subjected to such a large quantity of the horrid things in my entire life! Ginny,” she said, leaning over the side of the carriage to afford herself a better view, “you couldn’t possibly mind should I swat them all your way, as you are from the country. I am persuaded girls from the country are well-conversant with flies.”

  As Lucinda had only very recently altered her place of residence to town from the very same countryside from which Ginny hailed, any number of hot words sprang to Ginny’s tongue. However, it would seem that the choleric dowager duchess had a few home truths of her own for Lucinda.

  “I should say not, you guileless nincompoop!” Grandaunt Regina said with a roll of her eyes. “Neither Ginerva nor I have any more reason to endure flies than do you, Lady Avery. However, where there are horses, there are flies. It behooves a lady to endure them, as well as many an indisposition, in courageous silence!”

  Lucinda’s pretty brow furrowed in bewilderment, and she said nothing for a blessedly long moment. It occurred to Ginny that Lucinda was incapable of speaking and thinking at the same time. Sadly, exactly which phrase or utterance might cause Lucinda to buckle down to the task of thoughtful silence was anybody’s guess. As the silence grew, Ginny and Lord Avery exchanged a knowing glance that held for a moment until it skittered away in self-conscious guilt.

  In the end it was Lord Avery who, with a heavy sigh, bravely threw himself into the breach. “As I was saying, dear ladies, allow me to explain. Lord Crenshaw has elected to run a race against time. It has been agreed upon that he will begin here at the west end of the Serpentine Road. When he reaches the end, he will turn north on Park Lane, then west on North Carriage Drive, south on West Carriage Drive, then east on South Carriage Drive until he arrives at the corner and turns northwest onto the Serpentine, where he will arrive just where he began”

  “Pray tell, how long will that take?” Ginny asked, mindful of the dowager’s aversion to the sun.

  “Only a bit more than seven minutes, if my math skills are correct, though numbers were never my strong suit. Words have been, and ever will be, the only food for my soul,” Lord Avery admitted with an almost girlish bat of his lashes.

  “And moi, Eustace!” Lucinda insisted. “Do you not recollect the time you wrote that lovely poem in which I was food for your soul? Oh, it was so romantic, Ginny, you would never credit it! Everything about me was edible.”

  Ginny thought the concept was entirely creditable but was prevented from saying so, as Lucinda never so much as paused for a gasp of air.

  “My lips were cherries, my eyes were blueberries, my hair was spun wheat, and so on and so forth,” she added in an uncharacteristic attempt at getting to the point as quickly as possible. “In the end, he ate me all up, even though I must say, some of it sounded rather nasty. Eustace says we shall all be food for worms one day, but I daresay the mention of it in this particular poem made the whole thing a sight less delicious than it could have been”

  “Yes, of course,” Lord Avery hastily interjected.

  Ginny was ready with a hasty interjection of her own. “But I thought the whole point of the race was to beat the time of nineteen miles in under an hour. How is that to be accomplished if the distance around the park requires only seven minutes to run?”

  “A very good question, Miss Delacourt! He shall be required to run the carriage along the Serpentine Road and around the entire park eight times in order to be able to say he raced the full nineteen miles.”

  “Eight times! Oh, Eustace, I fear I shall go into a decline before then!”

  Secretly, Ginny echoed Lucinda’s dismay but held her tongue.

  “It shall all be quite exciting,” Grandaunt said with uncommon glee. “We shall see him pass us by many times before the end of the race, and he shall hear us cheering him along!”

  Ginny wasn’t sure if a cheer was in order, when, just then, the carriage hove into view.

  “What is wrong with it? It looks as if it has all been burned up!” Lucinda cried.

  “Not burned. Taken apart piece by piece!” Lord Avery cried. “Deuce take it, I should not have bet against the man! He has this race all sewn up, and the rest of us none the wiser.”

  In growing delight, Ginny took in the sight of the carriage, stripped of most of its parts. There were no doors, side panels, seating, squabs, or roof, only the framework, a place for the driver to repose, the wheel equipage, and the tracings for the horses, of which there were four. Instantly she understood t
hat the lack of adornment of any kind would make short work for the horses, lending wings to their hooves.

  Grandaunt let out a bark of laughter. “You are quite right, my lord. Oh, that Old Q was a canny one! I doubt not that this is the very carriage the Duke of Queensbury had built especially for his infamous race, one that was run … Well! I was no more than a babe at the time.”

  Lord Avery gasped. “You don’t say! The very one? Why, who even knew it still existed? The man is a master!”

  “Eustace,” Lucinda said, a formidable pout blooming on her face. “You have never called me a master. I think I should like it if you called me that”

  “But, my darling, of what could I possibly deem you a master?”

  “Well, I could be the Master of She Who Loves Poetry. Or perhaps the Master of Domestic Bliss,” Lucinda suggested.

  “Yes, but, my heart, you are not a man.”

  “Of course I am not a man, Eustace! What a faradiddle!”

  “I think what Lord Avery is trying to say, Lady Avery, is that you could never be a master. You will always be a mistress,” Ginny explained.

  “A mistress? Why, I have never been a mistress in my life! Eustace,” Lucinda said, clutching at her husband’s arm. “Am I a mistress? I think not, for I was there at the wedding, and I am persuaded that we are man and wife!”

  Grandaunt uttered a groan, prompting Ginny to take the old woman’s hand and give it a squeeze. “It shall all be over soon, dearest,” she said.

  “Not soon enough! If that boy does not jump into that socalled carriage this instant and run the race in less than fiftynine minutes, I declare I shall disown him!”

  As if warned from above, Anthony immediately strode out onto the road. He studiously ignored the crowd and busied himself with the task of checking the horses and carriage. Only once did he lift his head, causing Ginny to feel a frisson of delight when his eyes went directly to her face. It was if he knew precisely where to find her from the moment he came into view. He held her gaze with his own for what seemed a scandalously excessive length of time, but he did not smile or say a word. It wasn’t until he had turned away and climbed nimbly onto his seat that, she realized, nor had she.

  “I feel that he is angry with me,” Ginny said for Grandaunt’s ears only.

  “You must be blind, child. That look he gave you would melt ice! The boy is clearly heels-over-head in love, and if he can get himself together in time to win this race, I will be hornswoggled!”

  Privately, Ginny thought he looked very much together, indeed. He wore a bottle-green corded jacket over a mace-andnutmeg waistcoat and dark serge pantaloons paired with gold-tasseled Hessians and York Tan gloves. As his head was bare, she was treated to the sight of his dark curls glowing in the sun. Ginny could only assume that his lack of headgear meant he intended to travel at speeds too high for the retention of a hat. As he took the reins in his hands and prepared himself for the signal to proceed, the excitement in the air became palpable.

  A man stepped into the road and held aloft his pocket watch.

  “That is so we know he shall be timing the race,” Lucinda supplied.

  “Why, Lady Avery,” Grandaunt mused, “it would seem there is more going on in that head of yours than one supposed”

  “How very kind of you!” Lucinda said with a clap of her hands.

  Ginny was persuaded that Grandaunt’s remark was downright charitable, but she had little time to reflect on Lucinda’s mush-for-brains, for just then the man with the watch waved a small flag, and the carriage lurched into motion.

  All in all, the race was a good deal more exciting than Ginny had anticipated. Grandaunt had been correct in that it was above all things exhilarating to watch the carriage heave into view after each journey around the makeshift track. The prodigious amount of dust kicked up by the hooves of four horses was another matter entirely. It rose in great clouds such that it was a wonder Anthony could see well enough to follow the road. Clustered so close to the track as they were, a number of carriage occupants were affrighted by the proximity of Anthony’s large wheels to their own as he spun by. As a result, there was much gasping in awe as well as for breath when the clouds of dust threatened to choke the spectators.

  Once the lightning-fast carriage had spun by, and the cheers, as well as the inevitable boos from those who had bet against a win, had died away, and the dust on the road had cleared, the company at large entertained themselves by various means. For Ginny and Grandaunt this meant being subjected to Lucinda’s endless inane chatter, something from which Ginny was somewhat saved by virtue of watching the group of children in the carriage parked to the far side of the Averys. There were two girls and a boy, all of whom pranced from the carriage the moment their mother deemed it safe. As a result, they could regularly be found wandering the row of carriages, plucking flowers and weeds alike and encouraging the gift of sweetmeats from other carriage occupants with their round-cheeked smiles.

  Ginny found the girls to be lovely, but it was the boy, the youngest of the group, who most caught her eye. He toddled along behind his sisters in rapt adoration, and Ginny wondered how much less lonely her childhood might have been had she a brother or sister with whom to play. She would have taken great care of a younger sibling, just as did these girls, who kept a wary eye out for the racing carriage, making sure to round up their little brother and return him to the safety of their mother’s arms before he could be mowed down by the horses.

  Ginny made a game of observing them. How many people importuned for candy in exchange for bundles of wildflowers would fall under the children’s bright-eyed spell this time around? The number seemed to grow with each of Anthony’s turns around the track, and Ginny could only mourn her lack of comestibles, as it broke her heart to turn the children away again and again.

  In spite of the fun, Ginny spent a great deal of time mentally wringing her hands in anxiety over their antics. The little boy was highly inclined to dash across the road altogether and clamber through the brush that divided the Serpentine Road from the parallel river in order to splash a bit in the water. His sisters dragged him back on a regular basis, but it wasn’t long before Ginny began to worry that the children might not make it back across the road in time to elude the carriage. At the speed Anthony was going and the quantity of dust that obscured his view, she feared he would not be able to stop soon enough should the children not clear the road in time.

  At long last the carriage was about to come around the bend for the last time, and Ginny’s current trials would cease: Lucinda’s chatter, her anxiety for the children, and the race itself, on the result of which the fate of her marriage was rumored to rest. Ginny wondered, not for the first time, what had instigated the need for these athletic contests, but she fully comprehended how things stood with Society. Someone, doubtless Lady Derby and her entourage, had put it about that Anthony must perform certain tasks in order to marry Ginny. Once word was out and wagers made for and against, Ginny understood that Anthony had little choice but to proceed regardless of the utter lack of veracity in every word. Who could possibly be so insensible as to deny them marriage based on whether or not he won a carriage race? The idea was preposterous, and her only sorrow in the entire proceedings was Anthony’s lack in confiding in her the truth.

  Suddenly the cloud of dust that inevitably preceded the carriage rose into the air, and the reasons behind the need for these contests meant little more to Ginny than the dandelions that dotted the grass. The excitement in the air was growing with the cries and shouts of the spectators, who were jumping from their conveyances and standing in such large clusters that it impeded Ginny’s view of the proceedings.

  “Ginerva, do stand and see what is happening!” Grandaunt insisted. “With all this noise it will be a wonder if we will hear that little man with the watch call the time.”

  Ginny was only too glad to rise to her feet just in time to see Anthony’s chaise and four round the bend, then come to a screeching halt only a
few yards shy of the finish line. The man with the flag became extremely agitated and ran to the carriage through a colossal cloud of dust, waving his arms and shouting that Anthony had stopped too soon, but Anthony, his face caked with dirt, either did not hear or cared not. Jumping out of the carriage from the side opposite his audience, he ran through the bit of brush and scree at the river’s edge and dashed into the water, while the crowd roared in disbelief.

  “What is it?” Grandaunt asked with a tug at Ginny’s skirts.

  “I don’t know exactly, but he is every inch covered in dust. It looks for all the world that it has driven him mad, as he has run into the river and is splashing about in a craze!”

  “Oh, look!” Lucinda cried as she jumped up and down in her carriage, causing all the nearby horses to whicker and neigh. “He has found a dolly in the water!”

  Ginny was aghast to see that Lucinda was correct, or mostly. It did seem at first that the object Anthony carried in his arms was a doll, as it had a head and four limbs. However, it also had round pink cheeks and bore a clutch of dandelions in its hand.

  “No! Oh, no, it’s him, that precious little boy!” Ginny clambered down from the carriage unassisted and pushed her way through the crowd that had gathered between her and her objective just as a sharp cry from the boy’s mother rose above the gasps of dismay. Once clear of the crowd, she ran to Anthony with outstretched arms to receive the wet and muddy bundle he unhesitatingly deposited into her care.

  “He’ll be all right. Find his mother.”

  “Yes, but… how did you-?” Ginny asked, searching his eyes made even more blue through the streaks of wet dust that cascaded from his hair and down his face.