There were no books at Aunt Willis’s except the Bible and theological tracts, but Miss Hoot had dared to smuggle in some fairy tales and one or two classics such as Gulliver’s Travels. She had not, however, taught Elvira any languages, not even Latin or Greek, which Elvira regretted.
Remembering the letter from Delphine she had received the day before, her face clouded. She had not formed a favourable impression of her cousin’s character from the letter’s style and content.
Elvira sighed again. She was beginning to rub out the word Baseheart that she had traced on the steamy window when a voice hailed out from the coachman’s box.
“White Doe Inn approaching!”
Disregarding the health of the plump lady in her sudden excitement, Elvira threw down the window and peered out.
A moment later and she gave a start. It was late afternoon and the pale sun was sinking, but even so she could detect the black cloud of smoke that hovered over the roof of the galleried building ahead.
*
The White Doe Inn appeared to be on fire –
The yard of the inn was in chaos. Figures with soot smeared faces ran to and fro with pails, water slopping over the sides onto the cobbles. The air smelt of burnt wood.
A stable boy ran up to the coach and lowered the step for Elvira to descend as the other passengers peered after her through the open door.
“What happened here?” the coachman called out to the stable boy.
The boy, with soot-ringed eyes, grinned.
“Fire in the kitchen, sir. It was all ‘ands to help, us workers and the guests alike. It’s more nor less out. We’re just damping it down.”
Elvira looked about her in dismay. There was no sign of the Baseheart carriage.
“Only you, miss?” asked the stable boy.
The coachman answered for her. “She’s all.”
The boy gestured to another young fellow like himself and the two of them hauled down Elvira’s trunk and bags. The first boy then slammed the carriage door before Elvira could bid farewell to her fellow passengers.
The coachman cracked his whip and the coach wheeled round. It quickly passed out under the archway, carrying away the plump lady, cleric, spinster sisters, farmer’s wife and the devoted eloping couple.
Elvira stared after it, feeling strangely desolate.
“Will you come on into the parlour?” the stable boy asked.
Elvira glanced towards the inn and shook her head. The interior was bound to smell even more strongly of smoke than the yard. Timidly, she pressed a coin into the stable boy’s palm.
“I shall sit out here on my trunk,” she said. “I am expecting to be collected at any moment.”
“Suit yourself, miss,” he shrugged, pocketing the coin and loping off.
Elvira settled down onto her trunk, crossing her shawl more tightly over her breast. The sky was dark with something more than dusk. The air was chill and one or two tiny white flakes fluttered down through it, like the feathers of a ghostly bird. Servants began to light torches around the yard and one or two went over to the pump to wash their sooty faces.
“Fire out?” a serving wench asked them, pausing with a bag of flour balanced on her hip.
“Quite out,” responded one of the two men at the pump. “Not enough flame to fry an egg now!”
The wench laughed as Elvira’s eyes strayed beyond her and alighted on a tall stranger leaning against a post and wiping his brow with his sleeve.
He had obviously been helping to put out the fire, for his shirt was open at the neck and his sleeves were rolled up. His forearms looked very strong and brown and Elvira supposed he was an employee at the inn.
The wench noticed him too, as she shifted her bag of floor on her hip and sauntered over to speak to him.
Elvira wondered at her forwardness.
For some reason this scene made her think of Delphine and she turned to the reticule on her lap, opened it and took out the letter she had received from her cousin.
“Dearest Elvira,
Papa has told me you have agreed to come and live here as my companion. What fun!
My aunt Lady Cruddock’s nose is a little put out of joint, but I won’t mind her and nor should you. I didn’t want her watching my every move when the Prince comes courting.
I do hope you’re passably pretty for I don’t like to look at ugly things. Why, there are mornings when the sight of my Aunt Cruddock quite turns my stomach. People say I am the perfect image of my mother, and she was a great beauty.
Your mother had lovely hair, but Aunt Willis is a horror. I remember wanting to take the garden shears to those hairs on her chin!
Anyway, won’t it be a lark to have a Prince here? Well, someone who is nearly a Prince. I shan’t let myself love him, my aunt says that would be a huge mistake. But I shall let him love ME. Which he will do. I always have a full card at the ball. Shall I let you in on a secret? I am going to make him my slave. There! Don’t be shocked. It’s what all girls should do to their suitors.
Well, come quickly. I am very impatient, you know, and don’t like to be kept waiting.
It’s my only shortcoming, Papa says so.
Your affectionate cousin,
Delphine.”
From the tone of the letter, Elvira rather doubted that impatience was Delphine’s only flaw.
She stared down at the large untidy handwriting. Could she and the writer have anything in common?
She heard a rattle of wheels approach the inn and looked up expectantly. Sure enough, it was a private carriage, but as it rolled in under the arch she was certain it was not for her.
It was a rickety old-fashioned carriage, bouncing violently up and down on its springs. Its exterior was shabby and unpainted and there was no crest on its door. The two horses pulling it held the air of creatures coaxed out of retirement.
She was returning Delphine’s letter to her reticule when she heard herself addressed in rather rough tones.
“You ‘appen to be this Miss Elvira?”
She looked up. The driver of the rickety carriage was staring down at her.
“I – I am,” she stammered with trepidation.
“I’m ‘ere to take you to the castle.”
“B-Baseheart?” questioned Elvira, peering at the carriage to see whether she had indeed missed a crest.
The driver seemed to know what she was seeking and gave a sly chortle.
“Oh, you won’t find a crest, Miss This is the old governess’s carriage that’s been a-mouldering in the barn.”
“I see.”
“Lord Baseheart, Lady Cruddock, Miss Delphine – they were all out visitin’ in theirs and the axle is off the guest carriage. And the other one’s bein’ polished up for the use of Mr Charles Rowland, when he comes. And the last one is too grand altogether for the present purpose. So this is what you get!”
Hiding her humiliation at not being considered important enough to be collected in a crested carriage, Elvira rose from her trunk.
“This is all I have,” she gestured.
“Haul it aboard, then.”
Elvira blinked. Was he not even going to help? Since the driver turned idly whistling from her she saw that no, he was not. So she dragged one of the two carpet bags over to the back of the carriage and attempted to hoist it on to the luggage rack herself.
“May I help?”
In the dimming light, Elvira made out the sooty features of the stranger who had been leaning against the post. The wench had obviously received short shrift.
“Why, thank you, yes,” she said. “I should be very grateful.”
The driver had stopped whistling and turned at the sound of the stranger’s voice. The stranger regarded him sternly.
“Could you not have shifted yourself, man, to help the young lady?”
The driver excused himself in wheedling tones.
“I’ve a gammy arm. Injured at Waterloo.”
The stranger raised an eyebrow.
�
�Indeed? You must have been very young.”
“I were a lad of fourteen. The drummer boy. Played with me right ‘and. Can’t play no more.”
He raised an arm that was indeed puckered and twisted.
The stranger’s tone softened.
“No. I can see. That’s hard luck on a man.”
The driver was mollified.
“I’ll light the lantern to ‘elp you back there,” he offered.
Turning, he reached for the lantern that swung at the front of the coach and began to fumble with the wick.
The stranger meanwhile set about dealing with Elvira’s luggage.
Elvira could not help but marvel at the apparent ease with which he then hoisted it up on to the rack. He paused for a moment, passing his forearm across his brow.
“I hope you haven’t far to go,” he said. “There’s snow on the way.”
“I don’t know how far in miles,” answered Elvira. “But I was told it would take about three hours.”
The stranger gave a troubled frown.
“Three hours!” He stepped back and called up to the driver. “You surely don’t intend to travel for three hours with the weather so threatening?”
“I’ve my orders,” replied the driver loudly. “‘Sides, those ‘orses may look like nags but they’re ‘ardy.”
“I shouldn’t like to pass the night here anyway,” put in Elvira. “Not with the fire barely out.”
With a shrug, the stranger lifted the two carpet bags on top of the trunk and then he felt for the ropes that would secure the load.
“Light a-comin’,” called the coachman.
Elvira looked up into the soft yellow beam. The stranger glanced her way and then looked again, as if transfixed.
She could not read his expression, since he stood outside the small circle of light, but she felt herself scrutinised. She was not accustomed to this and began to blush. Had her hair come loose under her bonnet?
The driver was growing restive.
“We’ve got to be off. You said yourself the weather might turn rough. Best to get ahead of it.”
The stranger stirred in the darkness.
“My humble apologies,” he replied in so low a voice that the reply seemed hardly aimed at the driver’s ears. “I was momentarily dazzled.”
“Oh, by the light,” said Elvira with an understanding nod.
“No, young lady. By you.”
Elvira was astonished.
“By me? Why, what could dazzle you, sir, about me?”
The stranger gave a sceptical laugh .
“Come, come, young lady, you cannot be unaware of the effect of your beauty!”
“My beauty? You are not to mock me, sir. I know full well that I have a turned-up nose and too low a hairline.”
“Too low a hairline?” echoed the stranger.
“Yes. Aunt Willis said so.”
The stranger became immediately solemn.
“Oh. Aunt Willis. No arguing with her, I suspect.”
“No,” replied Elvira, a certain wistfulness in her voice. The stranger noticed and seemed about to respond when the driver threw out another impatient reprimand,
“What’s keepin’ you there?”
The stranger returned to his task without another word. He tightened the ropes around the trunk, hooking them through the handles of the carpet bags and tying them both in a firm knot.
When he had finished he wiped a hand on his shirt before extending it towards Elvira.
“Young lady.”
That he had extended his hand for Elvira to shake did not occur to her. Reddening, she groped in her reticule and withdrew a coin, which she attempted to press into the stranger’s palm.
He stepped back with a laugh and a shake of his head.
“It was a labour most willingly undertaken, ma’am. How could I have refused to aid a young lady possessing such – singular charms? Whatever Aunt Willis says.”
He opened the carriage door and handed Elvira in. Then he closed the door behind her and strode away towards the pump.
Pressing her face to the glass, Elvira saw that the wench had reappeared and seemed to be awaiting him with a fresh towel over her arm.
He certainly seemed a cut above the usual hostelry servant, she thought. She watched as he pressed down the handle and leaned his head into the flow of water.
The carriage gave a lurch and the two horses started off with greater vigour than Elvira would have supposed possible.
The stranger looked up from the pump, his face and hair dripping, the front of his shirt drenched. It was Elvira’s last image of him.
In an instant he and the wench and the still smoking inn were lost to sight.
With a heart grown suddenly heavy, Elvira turned her face towards Baseheart.
It struck her as fitting that the road ahead was dark and the moon was swallowed whole in a black and lowering sky.
CHAPTER TWO
Despite its unpromising exterior, the interior of the carriage was more comfortable than Elvira had expected. The upholstery might be worn but the seat was soft.
An image of the stranger at the pump floated before her and then she was fast asleep.
When she awoke the carriage was motionless.
She started up anxiously. Had they really reached Baseheart already? Had she slept for the whole three hours? Taking up her cape she threw it over her shoulders and turned to the window.
It was covered with ice. They must have been travelling at a slow pace indeed for the glass to ice up so much.
Reaching forward, she threw open the door.
The world outside was white. White and deathly silent. The forest ranged on all sides, trees looming petrified through the glittering flakes.
Elvira turned her head at the sound of a curse and leaned further out to see the driver leaning on the handle of a shovel, his brow shining and damp.
“What has happened?” she asked.
The driver gave a surly grunt.
“The carriage ‘it a drift. I ‘ad a shovel on the box, but I can’t dig the wheel out.”
Elvira glanced fearfully about her.
“W-what shall we do?”
“We passed a cottage with a light in the window about a mile ago. I’ll walk back and summon ‘elp. We can’t stay in the forest all night.”
“I’ll come with you!”
Elvira began hurriedly to put on her boots.
“That you won’t,” he snorted. “Your long skirts’d ‘amper us. I’ll go alone and you shelter ‘ere in the carriage.” He reached up on to the box and pulled something down. “‘Ere’s a spare horse blanket. Wrap up in that.”
Elvira caught the blanket. The driver leaned his shovel against the carriage, patted the horses and took down the glowing lantern from its hook.
“I’ll make tracks,” he said and set off.
Elvira stared after him and soon his figure was lost to sight. The glow of the lantern bobbed on for another yard or two in the swirling snow. Then it too was gone.
She was alone, more alone than she had ever been in her life. She thought of Aunt Willis in her hard-backed chair in front of the parlour fire and felt a pang of homesickness.
Aunt Willis’s house had been the only home she had ever known and despite its austerity and lack of affection, Elvira felt attached to it.
She tried to think of reaching the safety of Baseheart Castle, but in her imagination its turrets and spires were no more than icy stalactites, its windows frosted and empty.
She shivered and tried to sink deeper into the blanket. It smelled of hay and horse and its texture was rough on her chin.
The stranger had warned the driver and herself about the impending snowstorm, but they had not listened and now they were paying the price.
For a fleeting moment she imagined the stranger’s arms around her, his warm body sheltering her. He had said she was beautiful, after all!
Then she felt herself blush at these unaccustomed thoughts. What woul
d Aunt Willis say? A total stranger – a servant – a man who no doubt took the attentions of women for granted.
‘It’s only because I am alone and afraid that my mind is running on like this,’ she thought. ‘It’s only because I have met hardly any young men that I am thinking of him.’
She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but sleep would not come. She was so aware of the relentless snow outside.
After a moment she started up again with a sudden new terror. Supposing she and the carriage should be completely buried before the driver returned with help?
A howl out in the forest made her blood freeze. The carriage shifted on its axles as the horses strained anxiously in their shafts. She threw open the door and stared out. Flakes flew in, stinging her cheeks and there was now a strong wind behind the snow.
She closed the door again and threw her arms vigorously round her shoulders trying to warm herself, but it was no use. Soon she was shivering uncontrollably. Surely it would be better to be moving than sitting here?
This time when she opened the carriage door she stepped out. She tried to walk towards the horses to see how they were faring, but the wind forced her back.
The blanket flapped about her as she turned and peered along the route the driver had taken. With the wind behind her she would surely make good time if she followed him? If he was already on his way with aid, she would meet him en route and if not better she keep moving than freeze to death inside the carriage!
She set off feeling sorry to leave the horses behind, but there was no way she could unharness them.
There was no road beneath her feet and she seemed to be walking on a thick carpet which her boots sank into at every step.
She only knew that she was indeed following the road by the trees that lined each side of the route. Their ghostly branches seemed to point the way.
She struggled on, trying to convince herself that she was making good time. Soon the lower part of her skirt became caked in snow, growing heavier by the minute.
Then the wind changed direction. It now seemed to run through the trees with a flurry and strike her front on. She turned her face away from its icy bite.
She gave a cry as the blanket was ripped from her shoulders. The snow was so blinding that she could not, dared not, stop to search for it.
A Perfect Way to Heaven Page 2