“I am Richard, Lord Waverly’s man,” a superior voice cut through the darkness at last. Sliding back the shutter of his dark lantern a mere fraction of an inch so that only a slender beam of light escaped, the footman looked down disdainfully at Selinda’s huddled and shivering form. “I had understood I was to convey this note to a pouch, not a person.”
These words were delivered in tones of such icy disdain that Selinda was hard-pressed to gather her courage. Nevertheless, her situation was desperate. She swallowed hard and summoned her determination.
“You must take me to Lord Waverly at once,” she told him quickly. “We have not a moment to lose.”
Well, this was really beyond anything, Richard told himself. It was bad enough to be sent out into the damp and dark as if he were a mere errand boy, but he certainly was not in the habit of conveying females to his Lordship. He was paid far too much to stoop to that sort of thing. The lady’s voice, however, told him she was quality, and he dared not disobey. He had witnessed his master’s anger on only one other occasion (some silliness about the beating of a horse) but he preferred not to witness it again. Leading the way into the darkness and ungraciously forcing the lady to all but run to keep up with his stride, Richard once again considered the advantages of seeking employment elsewhere.
It was not more than a mile to Lord Waverly’s residence, but the combined effects of rain falling ever more heavily, a rising wind, and the slippery cobblestones rendered Selinda even more cold and miserable than she had been during her vigil. Half an hour later, Richard was glad to deposit the now-sodden girl in his master’s front hallway like a bundle of wet wash. Most of the lights had been extinguished, but the sounds of pacing issuing from Waverly’s library bespoke that gentleman’s anxiety as he awaited his servant’s return. Richard left Selinda for a moment, scratched on the library door, and announced in his most contemptuous manner, “A person wishes to see you, my lord.”
A bare moment later, Selinda found herself being borne in strong arms to the library, deposited carefully on a sofa in front of a roaring fire, and her wrists chafed by anxious hands. She blinked away the raindrops from her eyelashes and encountered the grave face of Lord Waverly.
“Some blankets, Richard, and be smart about it,” Waverly commanded in a terrible voice. He had been struck to the core when he saw Selinda’s pitiful form leaning against a wall for support in his own entryway. What a fool he’d been to send that useless Richard on so delicate a mission. Wretchedly, he looked into Selinda’s pale face as a wave of guilt and apprehension washed over him.
Richard, daunted by his master’s wrathful tone, quickly returned bearing an armful of blankets. Waverly had by now removed his own cravat and was wiping rain from the girl’s face with it. He knew that she must eventually get out of those wet clothes, but, for now, she needed to be kept warm. Without ceremony, he relieved the footman of his burden and arranged the blankets over her, tucking them in well. This task accomplished, he turned and addressed the man.
“Well, Richard,” he pronounced with a controlled iciness, “you may now explain why a hackney was not engaged.”
Richard’s chin tilted up just a fraction, and he held his employer’s eye a moment before looking away. “It did not appear seemly to me, my lord,” was his reply.
“And criminal negligence is more seemly? Idiot!” Waverly turned back to Selinda, who now, at least, was shivering less violently than before. Controlling himself with an effort, he continued, “Rouse Mrs. Fortnum and have a hot bath prepared in the blue room. Then you will wait until I call for you again.”
By now Selinda had recovered sufficiently to look about her. Of all the rooms to which she might have been shown, the library spoke most compellingly of Lord Waverly’s personality and tastes. Certainly, it bespoke comfort with its rich paneling and deep cushioned chairs and sofas. This was a room for living, not for show. Unlike many libraries, it actually looked as if it were used for reading. Many volumes, in fact, lay open on tables or were piled haphazardly about the room. Much to her chagrin, she noticed that one of these was the romance which had come into Lord Waverly’s possession that fateful day—it must have been a hundred years ago! Catching the direction of her gaze, Waverly put the volume into her hand and quietly smiled down at her.
He said nothing of it (although Selinda was torn between wishing and dreading that he might) but poured a glass of brandy and brought it to her. “Try drinking some of this, Lady Selinda,” he told her, his expression carefully unreadable as he looked at her. She had forgotten how very blue his eyes were. “It will make you feel a little warmer, you see.”
Obediently, Selinda took a small sip, raised her eyebrows, and shook her head a little as she pulled back.
“I know it is not what you are accustomed to, Lady Selinda—I remember how you quite lost your heart to champagne—but you must take one more sip. Please. Then I shall allow you to tell me what brings you to risk your well-being on such a night as this. There, now.”
Selinda swallowed once more and realized that this second taste was not nearly so bad as the first had been. She sipped again and felt the warmth course through her. Then, taking a deep breath, she began without preamble. “It’s Lucy. I fear she is in even greater danger than I had ever imagined. We must set out directly to find her, sir.”
Another gentleman might well have discounted the look of apprehension which overcast Selinda’s features, might have chalked it up to female excitability or hyperbole.
“Tell me,” was all Lord Waverly said.
By way of reply, Selinda pulled the remains of the charred letter from her reticule and watched breathlessly as the gentleman’s features gradually became as grave as her own.
“I am afraid you may have the right of it, Lady Selinda,” he said at last. “I shall go at once.”
“And I shall go with you,” Selinda told him resolutely. It was not a question.
“Lady Selinda...” he began hesitantly, as he took her hand in his and knelt beside her. Aside from concerns about her physical well-being after such a harrowing night, Lord Waverly had no objections to her accompanying him. In fact, he could think of nothing he would like better. However, he decided, it was high time he attempted to curb his eccentric outlook and have a care for the reputation of others. Richard’s obvious conclusions about the nature of Selinda’s visit had not been lost on him. He did not care one jot for the malicious whispering of the cats of the ton, but he knew he must protect Selinda. Silently, he cursed himself for a fool for ever suggesting that she might join him in his attempt to rescue Lucy. It was just that he had never been used to considering such matters before.
“Do not think to dissuade me,” Selinda broke in on his deliberations. Seeking valiantly to suppress her shivers, she went on, “Oh, I know what you will say, and you are right in part. I am tired and cold and wet and very much distressed. But I shall be more than distressed if I am left behind; I shall be distracted if I am treated like a useless female. Now, I think we might just as well wait until it is light, for we shall need to get some rest if we are to be of use to anyone. By then my things will be dry. I believe the roads will be quite muddy, so we had best ride, don’t you think? Have you such a thing as a sidesaddle about?”
When Selinda had finished her hurried little speech, she bit her lower lip and there rested in her eyes such a hopeful expression that Lord Waverly was, for a moment, quite unable to pronounce the objections which he had been formulating. After a time, however, he smiled, “My Lady Selinda, I know you are quite in earnest, but I feel enough of a rattle for having let Lucy down in this way. I will not on top of everything else be responsible for your becoming ill or—”
“But Lord Waverly,” she interrupted him with a small smile, “you can have no notion of my constitution. I have never been sick a day in all my life and, even should I contract some chill or other, I do not imagine I shall die from it. On the other hand, should you be so rash as to leave me behind, I must give you fai
r warning—I shall somehow contrive to follow you on my own, and that would be far more disastrous. As for other considerations, they are my concern, not yours. I pray you do not think of them.”
But Lord Waverly did think of them with unaccustomed dedication, and it did his newfound sense of propriety little credit that its preachments were punctuated with visions of taking Selinda once more into his arms and kissing her thoroughly.
Selinda’s mind was similarly occupied. Why, she fretted inwardly, must she wait to be kissed? What would happen, she wondered, it she just reached her hand out and traced the line of his jaw? Or pulled his hand to her cheek? Just to let him know that this endeavor was one they shared together?
Tentatively, she drew her hand out from under the blanket. He caught it in his and held it. Well...that was...acceptable. She frowned inwardly, suspecting that what she really wanted was to live her dream of the previous night. But, was that so bad? After all, she loved him. And the brandy had warmed her so delightfully. And he was so handsome. Well, then. She would kiss him.
She leaned in toward him just a fraction further. He smiled slowly and began to lower his face to hers. Just then, an insistent miaow broke the silence and a round orange kitten nimbly hopped up between them and began purring loudly about Selinda’s face.
“Well!” she exclaimed with a short laugh as they drew apart. “Who’s your fat friend?”
“You may well ask!” he replied ruefully, picking up the kitten and staring into its bright blue eyes. “This cream-swilling fellow doesn’t seem to know where he’s not wanted. Well, my lord Cat, you’d best make yourself scarce or I shall take you along on tomorrow’s adventure for your meddling!”
It was a very good thing the kitten had insinuated itself when it did, Lord Waverly frowned to himself. A very good thing indeed. Selinda’s eyes looked very large and her hair had begun to dry in soft ringlets about her face. If he had kissed her, he did not know where it might have ended. After all, there was no congregation to repress their passions this time, nor did he think, were any of the servants likely to enter without being summoned. Sternly pulling himself from Selinda’s charms. Lord. Waverly delivered her forthwith to Mrs. Fortnum’s efficient care. As he retired to his own chamber, his imagination was full of visions of rapturous embraces, diminished only by the remonstrances of his conscience. Long into the night and early hours, he stared into the darkness waiting for sleep or morning—whichever came first.
* * * *
Elsewhere on that dark and wretched night, Lucy and the rest of her party were as badly soaked as Selinda. In consequence of Prudence’s having enjoined the driver to take them one village farther than had been planned in hopes of securing a room at less exorbitant cost, they had been caught in a powerful downpour. Almost immediately the wheels of their conveyance had become securely mired in several inches of sticky mud at a low spot in the road. While Rupert, Prudence, and the hapless coachman railed against their predicament and each other, Lucy stuck her head out the window and looked about. It was a desolate stretch of road.
It took several minutes before Prudence had exhausted her store of invectives and set her mind to deciding just what was to be done. Come what may, she was not about to spend the night in a damp coach.
“Well,” she snapped poisonously at her son, “don’t just sit there like a great slowtop. Get out and push.”
“Wouldn’t serve at all, Mater,” he told her without budging. “If four horses cannot move the cursed thing, I hardly think my efforts would signify.”
“Possibly not,” his mother told him crushingly, “but the elimination of fifteen stone might.”
More than usually sensitive about his weight since his horrifying nightmare, Rupert was in no mood to take this criticism without some sort of retaliation. “Perhaps,” he spat, “you will join me outside the carriage, then, Mater. Where the loss of fifteen stone is a boon, will not thirty be a benediction?”
In the darkness there followed on this remark such a noise of grunts and slaps, that Lucy could only conjecture that one had set physically upon the other. Not at all wishing to have her own eyes blackened, she quietly opened the door and hopped forthwith out onto the lane where she stood in the rain, ankle deep in the dirt. By the flickering light of the lantern, she could see the coachman leaning up against the side of the vehicle, chewing his wad impassively as he trimmed his nails with a knife. Lucy watched in fascination as the rivulets ran down his face. Eventually, he spat into the darkness and regarded her with an indifferent expression.
“Nawt fer it but t’go back,” he told her laconically. “Canna drive forward wi’ that cursed load.”
The carriage was still rattling from the combat within as Lucy returned his gaze. “How far back?” she asked finally, wiping a drip off the end of her nose.
“Oooh, mile or less, I’d say, from last inn. Looked right enough to me.”
“What will you tell Aunt Prudence, Mr. ... ?”
“Mugwort,” he told her, spitting again. “Martin Mugwort. And I be tellin’ that one nawt.”
“Then whatever shall we do, Mr. Mugwort?” Lucy asked with some trepidation. “I should be glad to oblige and put in a word only I am not anxious to have my ears boxed. That is what always seems to happen when I open my mouth anymore. Anyway, I do not think I ought to go back inside the compartment until they have done with battering one another. And yet,” she sighed with a little tremble, “it’s cursed wet out here.” At the end of this little speech, she looked appealingly at the coachman as she pulled the collar of her pelisse up about her chin.
At this, the grizzled Mugwort gave his shoulders a mighty shrug, but, as the skies opened with renewed intensity, he at last relented and beat vigorously at the side of the coach with his crop. ‘“Ere now!” he bellowed savagely into the midst of the brawl. “Enough o’ that sorriness, devil take ‘ee.”
“Devil take yourself,” was Rupert’s eloquent reply. This remark, however, was quickly followed by a smart thwack in the darkness which apparently found its mark, for not another intelligible sound issued from the much-aggrieved fellow.
“Well, bumblewit,” Prudence addressed the coachman as she thrust her head out the door, “what are you going to do, now that your cowhanded driving has got us in this mess?” Then spying Lucy, she aimed a cuff in that direction and, after accusing the child of being an artful, sneaking thing, commanded her to return to the carriage at once. In spite of the chilling downpour, Lucy hesitated a moment before complying.
Over the past several hours, Mugwort had contracted a violent antipathy for his principal passengers. The brat was right enough as brats went, but the others had used him scandalously every inch of the road to his way of thinking. He would never have driven out into this weather had he not been anticipating a generous tip from a group of what appeared at first to be gentry. Well, their speech had betrayed them immediately once their guard was down. He’d kept his ears open and knew well enough that terms such as that hideous jade had recently been casting at her son and himself did not fall from the lips of people of birth. He had a good mind to toss them out onto the mucky road and be done with them. At least without their burdensome weight, he had a fair idea his team could dislodge their load right enough.
Well, he resolved sagely, if there was to be any compensation for this night’s hell, it seemed it must arise from seeing his passengers discommoded. Ignoring the last jibe, he opened the door all the way and announced, “Ye maun get out.”
“Whatever do you mean, churl? Out into the wet?” Prudence sputtered indignantly in his direction. “You belong in Bridewell!”
“It maun be,” he told her implacably. “Wheels be buried up to God knows where wi’ this damned load. Belike I got a pair o’ millstones fer passengers.”
It was this remark that catapulted Prudence into the roadway followed closely by her indignant son. It was one thing to exchange insults with relations, but to accept them from underlings such as this yokel was beyond bearing
. As they slipped about in the mud, the coachman immediately scrambled back onto his perch with surprising agility and set about coaxing the horses forward. Indeed, he had been quite correct in his assessment of the situation. With Lucy as the only passenger, it was no trick at all for the team to extricate the mired coach and turn it back in the direction from which they had come.
“What idiotish trick is this, sapskull?” Prudence demanded belligerently, pounding on the side of the coach with the flat of her hand. “I mean for us to go forward tonight.”
“Aye, then do,” the coachman chortled un-sympathetically. “For all that, I be goin’ back. Ye be welcome to follow along by coach light, but that be all.” With that, he gave the reins a quick shake and headed back in the direction of the last inn with the sounds of Rupert’s and Prudence’s abusive curses fading into the gale.
Inside the coach, Lucy was experiencing some mixed feelings as a result of this turn of events. She was glad she had obeyed Prudence’s summons to return to the coach, and gratified, of course, to see her noxious guardians suffering vast discomfort. How diverting Lady Sybil must find all of this, she smiled to herself. It was then that the horrible thought struck her: Lady Sybil’s ghost must have been left behind in the dark as well!
“What a horrid plaguey thing!” she cried aloud. “What is that, child?” came a faint voice.
“Lady Sybil!” she cried with a sudden burst of happiness. “This is famous! But however do you come to be here? I thought you would be forced to stay with—”
“Well, yes, child…but just give me half a moment to recover.” During the ensuing minutes, Lucy waited impatiently to hear the story.
“There,” the ghost finally said, “that will do nicely, I think. Well, how do I come to be here, you ask? I have just spent the last half-hour undoing the clasp on my necklace and extricating it from around that cow’s thick neck. It fell to the floor during the scuffle, but it must still be in the coach or I would not be here. This really is a piece of luck, Lucy, for I vow she will assume she lost it in the mud! Now, all you have to do is find it and put it on, and I shall be able to follow you wherever you go.”
High Spirits at Harroweby Page 14