When she awoke the next day she could hardly believe it was late in the afternoon. The sun was already sliding down the sky, the bare branches of the trees in the garden sending long fingers of shadow into the room. The curtains were drawn back and there was a tray of tea and biscuits beside the bed, mute witness to the fact that Sarah had been in and had decided to let her mistress stay asleep.
Diana rang the bell beside the bed. After some minutes she realized that Sarah was probably out, or flirting with someone at the kitchen door. Well, one could not expect a lady’s maid to behave like a lady’s maid when the girl was given so many other duties. Diana often thought her father regarded Sarah as his personal servant.
Mr Emberton had no doubt called as he had promised. Lord Dantrey had probably called as well since it was customary for gentlemen to pay their respects to the ladies they had danced with the night before. Finding her asleep, both had probably gone on to call on the Carters where they no doubt had received a rapturous welcome. Diana longed to see Mr Emberton. His easy, friendly manner, his open admiration would be balm to the aching wound that was Lord Mark Dantrey.
She put on her riding habit, wondering whether her very enjoyment in riding was suitable for a young lady in mourning. But Minerva had seen nothing wrong in her going out with the hunt and Minerva was always correct. The shako had been beyond repair but Sarah had tied black silk veiling around the crown of a mannish beaver, transforming it into a suitable riding hat for a lady.
After a brief meal of eggs and tea and toast, Diana went round to the stables and asked John Summer to saddle up Blarney. As usual, John Summer offered to accompany her, not feeling it was quite correct for miss to ride out on her own. But Diana wanted to be alone with her thoughts. Soon her flying figure could be seen vanishing over the horizon. Diana had decided to go in search of the gypsy woman.
Mr Emberton returned from the vicarage earlier, after having failed to see Diana, and suggested to his friend, Peter Flanders, that they might as well cut their losses and return to town.
Mr Flanders studied Mr Emberton out of the corner of his eye. He did not want to go back to St James’s so soon. Mr Flanders was well aware that several young men blamed their ruin on having been introduced to Mr Emberton by himself.
‘You see, I think she’s spoony about Dantrey,’ said Jack Emberton, ‘although I don’t think Dantrey wants her. He’s set his sights on Ann Carter. I went there before I went to the vicarage and he’s sitting by the chimney like a kitchen cat with Mrs Carter and Ann fussing over him.’
‘Not like you to get so depressed,’ said Mr Flanders. ‘Miss Armitage can’t be indifferent to you. She did try to elope with you. Have you ever considered just going over to the vicarage and getting down on one knee and asking her to marry you? She’ll either say “Yes” or “no”. If it’s “Yes”, then when the vicar asks you your prospects and you tell him you ain’t got any, you can hint you can be bought off. If it’s “no”, then we don’t need to waste our time in Hopeworth.’
‘You’re a downy one, Peter,’ said Mr Emberton with a slow smile. ‘Simplest way is best, heh? But what if Dantrey calls me out?’
‘He won’t. Not if the girl says she wants to marry you. Besides, you said he ain’t interested in Miss Armitage.’
‘True … but there’s something … Never mind. I’ll call tomorrow. You come with me and hang about and help me find out when the vicar’s away.’
‘No need for that. What about that pretty maid you was talking about t’other day? She’ll tell you, surely.’
‘That she will. Delightful armful of ladybird. If Miss Diana says no, then I’ll make sure the maid says yes before I quit the neighbourhood.’
‘You ain’t thinking of marrying a servant?’
Mr Emberton proceeded to tell Mr Flanders exactly what he meant to do to, and with, Sarah until the two gentlemen were helpless with bawdy laughter.
The squire and the vicar were at that moment seated beside the fire in the squire’s cottage. The vicar had gone straight to the squire’s after returning from Hopeminster. He had had to ride back since the carriage would need extensive repairs. He had a slightly sheepish look as if he felt the squire could divine what he had been up to during the rest of the night at the inn in Hopeminster.
But the squire only wanted to praise the fine qualities of Lord Dantrey. ‘Whatever he may have done in his youth, Charles,’ said the squire, ‘should not be held against him. He is a fine young man. I am sure Diana is not indifferent to him. He would make a most suitable husband.’
‘What of Emberton? She seems to like him as well.’
‘Despite what Lady Godolphin said, we really do not know anything of this Emberton. He appears to have means, but we still know nothing of his parentage. He is living with a very weak, shiftless sort of fellow by the name of Flanders. You can always judge a man by the company he keeps, Charles.’
‘Aye, but I have decided to let Diana have which one she wants, and if she don’t want any, then she can stay with me. Fact is, I would miss her.’
‘But you would not keep her at home simply because you are lonely?’
‘No, I ain’t lonely. Terrible thing to say with Mrs Armitage not so long gone. But Diana can do as she pleases.’
‘She is still very young. It is not always wise to let a young and headstrong girl do what she wants.’
‘Diana’s got a good head on her shoulders. Oh, I know it didn’t look like it when she was cavorting around London with Dantrey, but she’s aged amazing.’
This maturity of Diana’s seemed to be borne out when Sarah reported that Miss Diana was over visiting Mrs Jones and had called on several other of the parishioners. The vicar smiled at Sarah as she helped him out of his coat. There was nothing to worry about. Diana had grown up fast.
He did not know that Diana had only recollected her duties after she had failed to find the gypsy.
On the following day, Mr Emberton waylaid Sarah in the village and learned that the vicar had gone over to Hopeminster to see how the repairs to the carriage were getting along. He returned to his own home and dressed in his finest – blue swallowtail coat, doeskin breeches, buff waistcoat, and top boots polished to a mirror shine. He had tried to arrange his black curls into one of the fashionable backcombed styles but could not manage to achieve Lord Dantry’s elegance. By the time he had washed his hair – the first time in two months – and dried it and arranged it in its usual casual style, it was already late afternoon.
He rode hard to the vicarage, praying that the vicar was still in Hopeminster. Rose let him in, a fact that disappointed him somewhat, for he had been meaning to steal a kiss from Sarah before he saw Diana.
Diana rose to greet him as he was ushered into the parlour. She was wearing a dark grey gown edged with black and her thick hair was piled in a knot on the top of her head. She looked very elegant and assured and older than her years.
He decided to get the business over with as soon as possible before he lost courage.
‘Miss Armitage,’ he said, dropping to one knee in front of her. ‘Diana. I fell in love with you the very first time I saw you. I am glad our attempts at an elopement failed for I want the whole world to know that I wish to marry you in the correct and proper way.’
Diana looked down at him in wonder. ‘Are you proposing marriage, Mr Emberton?’
He rose and took her hands in his. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Please say you will do me the very great honour to accept my hand in marriage.’
‘Please sit down, Mr Emberton,’ said Diana, drawing her hands away. She sat down opposite him and studied him sadly. She was wondering why she felt so miserable. The man of her dreams was proposing marriage to her. She ought to feel wonderful. It could not be because of Lord Dantrey. It would not be because of Lord Dantrey.
‘Have you spoken to my father?’ she asked.
‘I had hoped to, but I learn he is in Hopeminster.’
‘I think I hear him returning,’ said Diana.
Mr Emberton threw himself on his knees again. ‘Say yes,’ he begged. ‘I love you so very much.’
‘Yes,’ said Diana in a tired little voice. ‘I will marry you.’
‘Hey, what’s this?’ cried the vicar from the doorway.
Diana stood up and faced him. ‘Papa, Mr Emberton has done me the honour of asking me to marry him and I have accepted.’
‘Oh, you have, have you? We’ll see about that. Come with me, Mr Emberton.’
Mr Emberton followed the vicar into his study. The vicar sat down beside his desk and Mr Emberton sat down opposite him.
‘What were you about,’ said the Reverend Charles Armitage, ‘to propose to my daughter without asking my permission first?’
Mr Emberton began to relax, as he always did when he was about to trick someone. ‘Such was my intention, sir, but when I saw Miss Diana’s beauty, I fear I could not restrain myself.’
‘Well, to business. She has a fair dowry. I expect you to match it. The lawyer over in Hopeworth will draw up the marriage settlements.’
‘I fear I cannot. I have no money.’
The vicar blinked.
‘If you have no money, how do you pay the rent of the Wentwater place and turn yourself out so fine?’
‘I play the tables.’
‘For a living?’
‘For my sins, yes.’
‘’Fore George, you’re a cool one. After what you have just told me, marriage to my daughter is out of the question.’
‘I fear you will break her heart, sir. She loves me very much.’
The vicar sat wrestling with his thoughts. He loved Diana, possibly more than his other daughters. She was the one who could sometimes burrow under his hard, self-centred crust. On the other hand, this Emberton had owned up that he had no money. Another man, a lesser man, would have lied or blustered.
‘Sarah!’ yelled the vicar loudly, making Mr Emberton jump.
Rose answered his call and the vicar’s face fell. Just a look at Sarah’s generous bosom and golden curls would, he felt, have cleared his head.
‘Fetch Miss Diana,’ he growled.
Diana came in, looking so white, so tense, and so miserable that the vicar all at once made up his mind.
‘Come and sit down, Diana,’ he said gently. ‘There is a problem here. Mr Emberton has no money and no prospects. He earns his living gaming.’
‘Papa!’
‘Fact. He told me so himself.’
Diana closed her eyes as a great wave of relief swept over her. She would not have to marry him. Papa would not let her. Why on earth had she promised? Perhaps because he wanted her and Lord Dantrey did not. Perhaps because she wanted Lord Dantrey to hear of her engagement and know that his kisses meant nothing.
‘I am so very sorry,’ she began, turning to Mr Emberton.
‘There’s nothing to be sorry about,’ said the vicar cheerfully. ‘He’s owned up like a gentleman. So here is what I am going to do. I shall give you both an allowance of £200 a year and you can both stay here with me. Got plenty of room,’ said the little vicar with an expansive wave of his arm.
‘I am not worthy,’ babbled Mr Emberton. ‘I am,’ his voice dropped dramatically, ‘what is known as a card sharp.’
‘Never too late to mend your ways,’ said the vicar.
Mr Emberton reflected bitterly that £200 was the amount with which he usually started an evening’s gaming. Of course, he could simply pack up and leave …
‘I will help you on the path to reform,’ said the vicar piously. ‘O’ course, if there was any question of you not mending your ways, then I have the means to see you do.’ He smiled at Mr Emberton but his little shoe-button eyes were as hard as flint. For all his size, Mr Emberton was a physical coward. He had visions of this hunting parson, this ‘squarson’, having him stoned if he ever strayed from the straight and narrow. There was more to this than met the eye. He had fallen into a trap. How could he have been so gullible as to believe Diana Armitage a virgin after she had spent two nights, by her own admission, in Dantrey’s company? Of course her father would marry her to anyone who asked.
The vicar looked at Diana’s white face. ‘I know you are shocked, my love, but I have only your happiness in mind. This is the man of your choice and I will see that you have him.’
He rang the bell. ‘Fetch brandy,’ he said to Rose, ‘and champagne for Miss Diana. Bring glasses for yourself and the other servants. We’ll have a celebration. Miss Diana is to be wed!’
Mr Emberton felt the net close about him. After half an hour, he was not only surrounded by the celebrating vicarage servants but by a great number of the inhabitants of Hopeworth village, including Squire Radford and his Indian servant, Ram. Mr Emberton saw the vicar take the tall powerful Indian aside and whisper something to him and the Indian turned his large brown eyes in Mr Emberton’s direction and gave a little nod. The vicar was obviously rallying his forces. Mr Emberton was going to be made to change his ways. He contemplated a flight to London, but in London there were all the powerful Armitage in-laws.
‘I do not like this at all, Charles,’ said the squire as soon as he was able to have a quiet word with the vicar. ‘You say this man is a confessed card sharp. Do you hope to keep him on the path of righteousness by threatening him?’
‘Don’t think I’ll need to,’ said the vicar cheerfully. ‘Love of a good woman and all that.’
‘Now, that is a myth,’ said the squire severely. ‘Once a card sharp, always a …’
‘Pooh, you say Dantrey’s reformed and yet you refuse to take the word of an upstanding fellow who has confessed the error of his ways.’
‘I feel uneasy,’ said the squire. ‘I only wonder what Dantrey will make of this!’
Diana was glad when she finally retreated to her room. She sat for a long time by the window, wondering what her life would be like with Jack Emberton. That offer of her father’s of £200 a year would have seemed a very generous amount before she had gone to London to meet Lord Dantrey. But she now knew that gentlemen like Mr Emberton would consider that enough for an evening’s pleasure. Still, he must love her very much indeed to tell her father the truth and promise to reform. Mr Emberton had been left alone with her briefly to say good night. He had taken her in his arms and kissed her. His mouth had been hot and wet and he had smelled of sweat. She was glad when the embrace was over although it seemed to have cheered her fiance who had looked down at her, smiling slowly in a way she did not like, and saying, ‘This might not be so bad a bargain after all.’ What had he meant by that? Someone else’s lust was acceptable, thought Diana miserably, if it created an answering lust in one’s own body. But Mr Emberton’s embrace had left her feeling frightened and sick. She tried to concentrate on all her dreams of friendship and companionship but they crumbled before the memory of the hot look in Mr Emberton’s eyes.
There was a furtive scuffling and giggling in the corridor. Sarah! She was surely not taking one of her country swains upstairs!
Diana opened the door and looked out.
She held up a candle and looked along the corridor. Sarah’s unmistakable giggle was coming from her father’s room.
Diana turned and walked shakily back into her room. She sat for a long time in a chair by the window, her thoughts in a turmoil. She felt young and lost and alone. All at once, she began to cry for her mother. Great wrenching sobs shook her body as she longed for the love and warmth and security that Mrs Armitage had never given her.
The news of Miss Diana Armitage’s engagement spread from the village of Hopeworth in ever widening ripples all over Berham county. They met up with the ripples of gossip about Mr Emberton’s unsavoury background carefully spread by Lord Dantrey’s servants until the whole thing grew into a tidal wave and descended on Osbadiston Hall, about the same time as Mr Fane descended from his carriage to pay a visit on Lord Dantrey.
He found his friend in his library, hotly cross-questioning his butler.
‘W
elcome,’ said Lord Dantrey in an abstracted way as his friend walked into the room. ‘I will be with you in a minute. Now, Chalmers, you tell me that Mr Armitage knows that Mr Emberton is a card sharp and yet is allowing the marriage to go ahead?’
‘That is the case,’ said the butler, Chalmers. ‘It seems that the vicar is determined to allow Miss Diana to wed because Mr Emberton has promised to mend his ways.’
‘Very well, Chalmers, you may go.’
‘What was all that about?’ asked Mr Fane when the butler had left the room.
‘That was all about the fair Miss Armitage. Mr Emberton proposed marriage and told the vicar that he, Emberton, is a wastrel and a card sharp. The good vicar was evidently so impressed by the man’s honesty that he not only gave him his daughter but offered him an allowance, just when I thought I had put a spoke in that particular wheel.’
‘How?’
‘I did not want to see any girl being misled by Emberton and so I got my servants to spread the news of his doubtful character about the district. Unfortunately, all that did was to reinforce public opinion in the view that Emberton is a reformed character. By the time my gossip got about, the vicarage gossip of Emberton’s confession was already abroad. Perhaps he really loves her.’
‘Well, she must love him,’ said Mr Fane reasonably, ‘else she wouldn’t have said she would marry him.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Stands to reason,’ said Mr Fane awkwardly. Lord Dantrey’s face looked so white and set.
‘I cannot believe it,’ muttered Lord Dantrey. ‘I will not believe it until I have seen them together.’
‘I did not realize you loved her yourself,’ said Mr Fane.
‘I don’t know if I do. She infuriates me. But she’s too good to be tied to the likes of Emberton.’
‘The way I see it,’ said Mr Fane, ‘there’s nothing to be done at present. Leave fellows like Emberton alone and they’ll soon emerge in their true colours. What you need is some other girl to take your mind off Miss Armitage. What about this Miss Carter you wrote to me about?’
Diana the Huntress Page 16