The Earl and the Hoyden

by Mary Nichols

  She sat on for hours, until the sun dipped over the horizon and the air became chill. She could not move, could not leave until she knew the men had been saved and no lives had been lost. That, too, would be her responsibility and the longer it took, the greater the chance they would already be dead when someone at last managed to reach them. Marriage was out of the question.

  Roland made himself concentrate on what he was doing. With others to help him, they set off a carefully calculated explosion in the end of the water-filled tunnel, which filled it with rubble. Standing up to their knees in water, they watched the water rise slowly until it was up to their waists and then tip over into the higher passage. Slowly, achingly slowly, the water level in the lower tunnel dropped until it dwindled into a mere puddle. Roland returned to the men, waiting at the bottom the shaft. ‘I think we’ve done it.’

  They gave a loud cheer and scrambled to the surface, helped by men at the top with the tackle and it did not take a quarter as long as it had for Roland to do it the first time. Once on the hill again, they ran down to the mine workings and Roland volunteered to go down to see if their strategy had worked.

  Charlotte tried to prevent him from doing so, but he insisted and so she watched him disappear down the adit and stood with her heart in her mouth, waiting impatiently for him to report what he found. The news of the disaster had spread in the way things like that did in a small community and there was a large gathering of miners and their families, including Mrs Biggs, Beth and Matty, and Jacob Edwards who had arrived from Shrewsbury. Everyone was praying, some audibly, some just moving their lips, some silent and watchful.

  It seemed an age before they heard a voice echoing up from the depths. ‘They’re alive! Send down a bucket.’

  A large bucket in which men and equipment were sometimes lowered was sent down and a few minutes later it was hauled up and a weak and only just conscious Daniel Biggs was helped out. Mrs Biggs and her daughters, all crying with relief, crowded round as he was carried off to one of the nearby cottages to be revived. The bucket went down again and the second man was hauled up, followed by Roland, for the second time, soaked to the skin. ‘They were in water up to their chests,’ he reported. ‘Another half-hour and their air would have given out.’

  ‘Thank God!’ Charlotte breathed and her prayer was repeated all round. ‘Now seal that level off. I will not risk another man’s life down there.’ She had sloughed off the mantel of the passionate woman as easily as taking off her clothes, Roland noted, and was again the practical woman, used to command, though she did seem to have a conscience about what she asked of her workmen.

  ‘Miss Cartwright, that will put men out of work,’ Jacob reminded her.

  ‘I will have to find something else for them to do.’

  ‘We owe a great debt to his lordship,’ Robert Bailey said. ‘Without him the men would never have been brought up alive.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, glancing towards Roland. His wet shirt and riding breeches outlined every contour of his body and increased her anguish. ‘We cannot thank him sufficiently, but no doubt a way will be found to show our appreciation.’

  ‘I want no thanks,’ Roland said stiffly. ‘I did what any man would have done in the circumstances. Now if you will excuse me, I will leave you.’ He bowed to Charlotte, picked up his coat, waistcoat and hat from the ground where he had thrown them, and went to find his horse, quietly cropping the grass. He had done all he could, not only to help save the men, but to redeem himself in Charlotte’s eyes. But it was not enough.

  It was dark when he returned home and his hope that he might be able to gain his room unnoticed was dashed when he was met in the hall by Geoffrey and Elizabeth, coming down the stairs dressed for dinner. It was long past the usual hour and he surmised they had put off the meal to wait for him to come home, until Mrs Fields told them it would be ruined if it was not soon eaten.

  ‘Roland, whatever has happened to you?’ Elizabeth asked, shocked by the sight of him. ‘You are soaked and covered in blood.’

  ‘Am I?’ He had hardly noticed that. ‘It is nothing. I will go up to my room and clean myself up. Go in to dinner. I will join you later.’

  ‘But you must have your wounds seen to.’

  ‘Travers will look after me.’ He toiled up to his room where Travers joined him, accompanied by two footmen carrying a bath, which they proceeded to fill from jugs of hot water brought up by maids. ‘Lor, Major, you look as though you’ve been in a battle,’ the corporal said as Roland stripped off and lowered himself into the water. Scratches and yellow and purple bruises covered his body.

  ‘You could call it that,’ he said, smiling ruefully. ‘A battle with the elements. Two miners trapped below ground by rising water.’

  ‘Did you get them up safely?’ Travers, the bluff soldier, was as gentle as a woman, bathing his cuts.

  ‘Yes, thank God.’ He went on to give a succinct account of what had happened and how fortuitous that he had been riding in the area and remembered the underground tunnels.

  Half an hour later, refreshed and in clean clothes, with his scratches cleaned and dressed and his bruises anointed, he was ready to go down to join his house guests. ‘While I am gone, you may pack,’ he told Travers, as he went out of the door. ‘We are going to London on the morning stage.’

  ‘Very good, Major.’ Travers smiled to himself, wondering if this sudden decision had anything to do with a certain young lady, but he could not ask. His master had been in a strange mood for weeks, up one minute, down the next. It was as if he had been waiting for something to happen, and now it seemed it had, if the expression on the Major’s face was anything to go by. He was pale, his jaw rigid, but he was calm. Travers had always understood that strange and dangerous calm and knew it was not the time to question or comment.

  Roland went downstairs for a belated dinner, and for a second time, gave an account of the rescue at the mine, this time to Geoffrey, Elizabeth and Miles Hartley, though he said nothing of his conversation with Charlotte. That was something he would never divulge.

  ‘You will be the hero of the hour,’ Elizabeth said, when he had finished. ‘If you were not in demand before, you will undoubtedly be besieged with invitations now.’

  ‘I should hate that. I intend to leave Amerleigh for a time.’

  ‘Leave!’ Elizabeth exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, I have business in London.’ He turned to his cousin. ‘Geoffrey, could I prevail upon you to keep an eye on things here while I am away? You do not need to stay in residence if you do not wish to. My mother can send for you if you are needed.’

  ‘Certainly, I will. How long will you be gone?’

  ‘I do not know.’ He was tempted to say he wasn’t coming back at all, that he could turn his back on Amerleigh with no regrets, but he knew he was deceiving himself. There were regrets in plenty: leaving his gentle mother who loved him and whom he loved, and there were all the people who depended on him, the staff, so recently reinstated at the Hall; the Biggs family, little Tommy Biggs and all the other village children he had come to know through him; Miles Hartley and the proposal for a school for deaf children. Most of all his disastrous love for Charlotte Cartwright, who could not love him because she saw him as an enemy she must overcome. She would think she had won and he supposed she had, since he was leaving the field. He would forget her all the sooner if he never saw her face, never saw those appealing hazel-green eyes, the abundance of chestnut hair and that enchanting smile ever again. And suddenly that prospect was far from appealing.

  ‘A few days, perhaps a week or two, time to let the furore die down.’ He did not mean the fuss over his supposed bravery, but the gossip about Martha’s rejection of him. Then perhaps he could face Charlotte again and begin courting her properly. He could not give her up. ‘Miles, I will also try to see the doctor you spoke of, if you give me his direction.’

  ‘Of course. I will come with you, if you wish.’

  ‘No, stay here and conti
nue your work with Tommy. That must not come to a stop because I am not here. Perhaps Miss Cartwright will resume sharing the lessons.’ It almost choked him to say her name.

  It was Dobson, saddling Bonny Boy that afternoon, who told Charlotte he had seen the Earl leaving on the morning coach when he had been taking one of the other horses to the smithy in Shrewsbury. ‘Going to London,’ he said. ‘And staying, too, for he had a portmanteau with him. And his servant was with him, carrying a knapsack. Smart as ninepence in uniform they both were.’

  ‘Really, I cannot see what business it is of yours where he goes,’ she said, still miserable over her inability to accept Roland’s offer. She remembered thinking, when he first came home, that she should make him love her and then disdain him, just to teach him a lesson. She had not consciously tried to do anything of the sort, but in any case, it was she who had learned the lesson. ‘He is a free agent and may go where he pleases, when he pleases and with whom he pleases.’

  ‘Yes, miss. I thought you might be interested, considering what he did yesterday.’

  ‘How do you know what he did yesterday?’ she asked sharply, her mind still on her conversation with Roland.

  ‘Why, everyone knows, Miss Charlotte. Half the village heard the explosions and went up to see what was going on. I heard tell there was going to be some kind of reception in his honour.’

  ‘They can hardly do that if he is not here, can they? No doubt he found the idea distasteful and that is why he decided to leave.’

  ‘Yes, miss.’ He finished his task and handed her the reins before bending down to offer his joined hands for her foot. ‘No doubt he will soon be back. There’s still work on the estate and he would not leave a job half-done.’

  ‘No, I am sure he would not.’ She settled herself in the saddle and trotted out of the yard, down the drive and on to the lane.

  She did not want to hear about the Earl, she did not want to know his reason for leaving the village, she told herself she had no interest in the time of his return and the sooner she forgot his existence and went on with the work that was her lot in life, the better. It was a life for which she had been trained, a life bequeathed to her by her father and she must accept it and hide the ache in her heart as best she could.

  At Browhill, the men were worrying about their jobs, even while they obeyed her and tipped stones and rubble down the shaft. Mr Cartwright would never have closed the level down just because there was a bit of a risk, they told her; all mining was risky, they accepted that. She reassured them, telling them she would open more levels; the mine was still viable. Satisfied that all was well, she returned to Mandeville.

  Home. She had known no other. As a child she had loved it, loved the building and its open spaces, where she could roam on foot or on horseback, with the wind in her hair and the smell of the heather in her nostrils. But now it meant nothing without Roland and, perhaps for the first time, she realised what loving someone meant. It meant being adaptable, talking problems over, sharing everything, the good and the bad, giving way sometimes. None of her riches could compensate for his loss. Oh, why had she not seen that before, when she could have done something about it?

  She dismounted and handed her mount over to Dobson and went indoors to be greeted by a great-aunt who seemed to have come to stay, determined to make a lady of her. Too late. Much too late.

  It was politeness for guests to call on their hostess after a ball, to express their appreciation and gossip over the teacups about what had happened, and Charlotte wondered why no one came, especially as they must be agog with curiosity about what had happened up at the mine. When she commented upon it to her great-aunt, Emily was reluctant to offer a reason—‘I am sure I do not know’—in a way that made Charlotte realise she was hiding something.

  ‘What are the tattlemongers saying now, Aunt?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, they have nothing better to do than think up monstrous tales.’

  ‘Go on. I insist on knowing.’

  ‘Oh, it is something and nothing. They say Martha turned the Earl down because you spent two days with him in Liverpool and though you went in your own coach you came back in his and you were seen arriving in a state of undress…You do not want me to go on, do you?’

  ‘No, I understand. Perhaps it is as well his lordship has gone away.’

  ‘If he had an ounce of decency, he would offer for you and be done with.’

  Decency! Did he know what they were saying? Was that why he had proposed, just to save her reputation? She did not know whether to be pleased or angry and anger won the day in the end. ‘If he did, I should refuse him. I do not want to marry anyone, least of all the Earl of Amerleigh.’ She said it firmly to convince her aunt, but she could not convince herself. ‘I am going up to change.’

  She had hardly had time to put on a light blue silk dress, tidy her hair and rejoin her great-aunt in the drawing room, when they heard the sound of a carriage arriving.

  ‘I wonder who that can be,’ Emily murmured, going to the window to peep out. ‘My goodness, it is the Countess. Charlotte, stir yourself.’

  Two minutes later a footman came and announced, ‘The Countess of Amerleigh, ma’am.’

  Charlotte hurried forward to greet their visitor. The Countess, although always perfectly polite when they met, had never called on her before and she wondered if the visit had anything to do with the events of the previous day and her refusal of Roland. Surely he had not sent his mother to plead on his behalf? She dismissed that idea as ludicrous; he would never let anyone else fight his battles for him. ‘My lady, you are very welcome. You will take some refreshment?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Charlotte ordered the footman to see to it, and indicated a chair. ‘Do sit down, my lady.’

  The formalities dispensed, her ladyship ensconced in a chair and Emily twittering beside her, Charlotte sat down on one of the sofas and waited to be enlightened.

  ‘I have come to congratulate you on the success of your ball,’ the Countess began. ‘And also to see if you have taken any harm from what happened yesterday. It must have been a very worrying ordeal.’

  ‘I came to no harm, my lady. In fact, I did nothing at all, and the worrying was done by the men. We have Lord Temple to thank that all ended happily.’

  ‘So I have heard.’

  The conversation halted as a footman brought in the tea tray and set it down beside Charlotte. ‘You can leave it,’ she told him. ‘I will see to it.’

  ‘I was worried to death when my niece was out so long,’ Lady Ratcliffe said, as Charlotte set about pouring tea. ‘I felt sure she had taken a fall from her horse and was lying somewhere on the hills, injured, or even, God forbid, dead. I sent servants out to search for her and was in total despair, especially when I was told there had been explosions up at the mine. You do not know the relief I felt when she returned safely.’

  ‘I can imagine it,’ the Countess said. ‘I did not see my son when he returned, but I have been told he looked as if he had been in a fight. But he assured everyone he was unhurt and was able to leave this morning as planned.’

  ‘He planned to go?’ Charlotte asked in surprise.

  ‘Yes, we thought it for the best.’ She paused. ‘It was an unfortunate business and a shame it had to happen at your ball.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I refer to my son’s interview with Miss Brandon.’

  ‘It is of no consequence to me, my lady,’ Charlotte said firmly.

  ‘She is a very silly girl,’ Lady Ratcliffe put in. ‘I saw her drag him off myself. Being an honourable man, what could he do but offer for her?’

  ‘Miss Brandon is very young,’ the Countess said. ‘I do not think she quite understood the implications of her actions.’

  ‘Then her mother should have made sure she did,’ Emily said sharply. ‘If she were my daughter—’

  ‘Aunt, I do not think we should speculate on what happened, do you?’ Charlotte put in. ‘There is enough of that
going on already. And I am sure the Countess does not want to hear it.’

  As she sipped her tea, Charlotte was aware that the Countess was looking closely at her and it made her feel uncomfortably transparent. How much did her ladyship really know? Did she know that a little over twelve hours later Roland had proposed to her?

  ‘My son decided a little time away from Amerleigh might be beneficial to all concerned,’ the Countess went on. ‘But he has not gone for good. His roots are here and, whatever happens, he would not neglect his duty to his people.’

  ‘I am sure he would not,’ Charlotte said. ‘No doubt you will miss him very much.’

  ‘Yes, especially as he has not long been back after six years away.’

  ‘Did you find him much changed?’ Charlotte had not meant to ask that, but the words slipped out.

  ‘He has grown much bigger,’ the Countess said with a light laugh. ‘And more self-assured.’

  ‘I did not think he ever lacked self-assurance, my lady.’

  ‘Oh, he did, you know, but as his father would have condemned it in him, he covered it with a certain brashness that made him appear unfeeling. But that was not the real Roland. The Roland I keep in my heart is gentle and courteous and affectionate…’

  ‘I am sure he is,’ Charlotte murmured, agreeing with every word.

  ‘I would be distressed if you thought ill of him, Miss Cartwright. Whatever you may think, he holds you in high esteem. And so do I. I should be glad to welcome you at the dower house, should you ever wish to call.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  After a little more desultory conversation, mostly about the weather and the close shave the trapped miners had had and how thankful they were that they had taken no lasting harm, the Countess took her leave.

  ‘Well, what do you make of that?’ Emily asked after the door had closed on her.

  ‘Nothing. She was just being polite.’ It was more than that; the dear lady must have known how Charlotte was being vilified and had come to reassure her that not everyone condemned her. It was done so discreetly that Charlotte could not have openly thanked her, but she was grateful.