A Most Unusual Lady

by Janet Grace

  Georgiana was furious, and more than a little frightened. As the dance ended Mr. Blane had gripped her arm painfully tightly above the elbow and, leaning over her with solicitous charm, insisted on taking her to find some refreshment. He had waved aside her protestations that she was not at all thirsty and would prefer to return to her mama with a smirking smile, a casual gesture of his cane, and ‘Of course it is not too much trouble, my dear.’

  He had manipulated the silver-topped cane neatly from hand to hand throughout the dance, tapping and twirling it in time to the music in a way Georgiana had privately thought extremely affected. She glowered at it now as he held it ahead of them to clear a way through a knot of laughing people at the very back of the dance-floor. His grip on her arm was relentless, and she was about to protest again when he opened a door beside them and propelled her swiftly through.

  ‘Mr. Blane!’ she gasped, thoroughly startled.

  It was a small ante-room, lit by a single candle on the mantelpiece, and had obviously been discovered and used as a cloakroom. A few pelisses and bonnets lay on chairs in the corner.

  Mr. Blane closed the door and leaned back on it, releasing Georgiana. His head tilted back against the wood, he regarded her from under his lashes, a slight smile on his lips.

  ‘You and I, my dearest Miss Lyntrell, are about to come to an understanding about our future together. I am tiring of your coy games, the come-hither smiles, then the anxious blushes, the flirtatious repartee, then the demure, maidenly whisper. You once made your delight in my company plainly obvious.’ His smile grew a little broader. ‘Your prim little governess may have taught you to play the coy miss, but now I have the blessing of your family, and the need for such games is passed. I have it in mind to delight you and your family tonight with an announcement of our impending nuptials. So let us celebrate the event.’

  He straightened up and moved towards her, his smile spreading into a grin of anticipation. His need for her fortune was desperate, and now it was almost his. He had been drinking heavily all day. The wine was hot in his veins. She looked so very young and defenceless.

  ‘No! Mr. Blane, no! This is all a terrible mistake. My parents do not understand ... My feelings are not what you have thought ... Please, take me back to Mama ... No, Mr. Blane, no, you must not...’

  ‘So you want a little persuasion to know your own feelings?’

  With a quick stride forward, he grabbed her wrists and pushed them behind her back, so her body was forced against him. With greater strength than she had thought possible in him, he pinned her wrists with one hand, freeing the other to grip her chin, forcing her twisting face towards him. Furiously she fought and strained, but his strength was too great and her little dance slippers made no impression where she kicked against his boots. He laughed at her.

  ‘Just a little persuasion...?’

  His breath, thick with stale wine, was hot and foul on her face.

  ‘No!’ she sobbed.

  The door to the dance-floor flung open and John strode in.

  ‘You filthy, despicable dog!’

  But his violent advance on Mr. Blane was cut short by the clutches of Georgiana. She flung herself, sobbing with shock and relief, into his arms the moment the startled Blane loosened his grip.

  John pressed her tight against his chest, holding her face to him as if to blot out for her the very sight of Blane. He could feel the frightened fluttering of her breath and the long shudders that shook her body.

  ‘Get out!’ His words to Blane were icy with his effort at control. ‘Just go.’

  Blane had walked over to the door and picked up his cane. He backed out as John, still tightly holding Georgiana, advanced on him, but then he glanced at his cane and his courage seemed to return.

  ‘I don’t know what right you think you have to interrupt my dealings with my fiancée,’ he announced, setting his shoulders defiantly, apparently oblivious of the people staring from the tables around him. ‘You should be congratulating, not insulting us.’

  He smirked at John, then registered the naked fury in John’s face as he stepped grimly forward. Suddenly panicking, Blane stepped backwards, stumbled over a chair abandoned by a frightened mama pulling her daughters away to a safe distance and, fumbling momentarily at his cane, then whipped it apart to expose a glittering sword blade from within it.

  Several people screamed. Dancers stopped to stare, and people at further tables stood up, peering for the source of the disturbance. The music faltered to a halt.

  Aware of nothing but John’s fury, Blane backed and wove out into the dance-floor, pointing and jabbing the blade towards John and hissing insults.

  ‘My God, he’s drunk!’ a disdainfully horrified man from the watching crowd remarked. ‘It’s disgusting!’

  ‘Quite disgraceful!’ someone concurred.

  John set Georgiana quietly and firmly aside, handing her to a plump matron standing apprehensively nearby.

  ‘Take care of her for me!’ he commanded, without taking his eyes from Blane’s contorted face, and strode out on to the dance-floor towards the flickering blade.

  ‘John!’ Georgiana breathed in anguish.

  All Aleminster held its breath and watched. John slowly peeled off his jacket and put it over his arm. He stood tall and vital in his milk-white shirt, hitching back the cuffs as he studied Blane coldly.

  ‘You think to come between us, do you?’ Blane hissed, and lunged the blade straight at John.

  With a quick twist aside John flung his coat over the whipping blade, pushing Blane off balance. With a swing that held all his pent-up rage, John punched Blane full on the nose. In a spurt of blood, and amid screams from the watching ladies, Blane collapsed on to the floor. John, straightening up to disentangle his coat from the vicious blade, was suddenly aware of the crowd clapping and laughing in their relief. He gave a wry smile and bowed right and left.

  ‘I must apologise to the ladies for this disgraceful disturbance. Perhaps one or two of the gentlemen could help me to ... er...’ he gestured at Blane ‘...to clear the floor for dancing?’

  Louisa had to admire him. The whole incident was outrageous, but he had all Aleminster on his side. They carried the disgraced Blane out and dumped him in a carriage, with orders to deliver him to the Green Dragon. When Georgiana pitifully whispered that she wanted to go home, he gently forbade her.

  ‘What, and give all the Aleminster cats even more to get their claws into? No. You will stay and dance the evening out, and show them you have not a care in the world. Here is young Fetton come to claim you now. Smile for him, my brave girl. He will help to stop any gossip.’

  With Mrs. Addiscombe’s impending hysterics he was equally astute.

  ‘I know I can rely on you to help me in minimising this deplorable incident. We must all behave quite calmly. I can see you are feeling far more the thing now, for you are quite back in your usual beauty. Come, let me take you over to talk to Mrs. Fetton, I see she is alone. I will bring you both a glass of wine.’

  All solicitous concern for her welfare, he led her firmly across the room, but he looked back and dropped Louisa a conspiratorial wink.

  He looks quite disgracefully pleased with himself, she thought, wistfully, as a portly acquaintance of the Addiscombes kindly led her off to dance.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Mr. Ferdinand had obviously reached his desired understanding with Georgiana, for he announced at the end of the assembly that he required the direction of her guardians, Sir Philip and Lady Mondfort, in London, and would call formally on Mr. Addiscombe on the morrow.

  ‘But not until the evening, my dear sir,’ Mrs. Addiscombe had stipulated, ‘for I shall be in bed all day recovering from my exertions, and I shall not want to miss your visit.’

  The evening did not begin auspiciously, however. Mr. Addiscombe had been irritable throughout dinner over some long-standing boundary dispute with a neighbouring farmer, heckling the ladies at length over some new fancied infringeme
nt of his rights. He persistently asked Louisa what her family would have done in such a case, then, before she could speak, answered his own question as best suited him and rushed on with his tirade. Mrs. Addiscombe sensibly ignored him, having heard such ranting many times before, merely inserting, ‘Really, sir? That is too bad!’ into convenient pauses.

  Mr. Addiscombe automatically responded with, ‘Pish, woman, you don’t know what you are talking about!’

  Georgiana was silent throughout the meal, but her glowing face and sense of pent-up excitement spoke volubly for her, reminding Louisa of the expression of a small child on Christmas Eve.

  The three ladies were all relieved when the meal was over and they could retire to their drawing-room. Georgiana’s excitement bubbled over.

  ‘Oh, Mama, Louisa, he will soon be here, coming to claim my hand!’

  She pirouetted happily, skirts swirling, hugging each of them in turn. She paused by Louisa, clasping her hands.

  ‘If you had but seen him in the ante-room last night, when he saved me from that dreadful man. So strong! And to think how Mr. Blane was carried away looking so foolish, with his nose bleeding all over those ridiculous clothes. Now, I could almost laugh. But then!’ She shuddered, her excitement dying.

  Louisa looked at the red weals on Georgiana’s soft white arms, and her anger increased at the unscrupulous man who had treated her so. But her employer’s thoughts were on Mr. Ferdinand.

  ‘Like a true knight rescuing the fair maiden from a dire fate. Galloping up on his white horse, his armour gleaming in the sunlight...’ She was rhapsodising whimsically to herself over on the sofa, and Georgiana quickly joined in.

  ‘Why, yes, indeed he is like that, isn’t he, Mama? With scarlet pennant fluttering, and his trusty blade glinting in his hand, fresh from slaying fearsome ogres—’

  ‘I hate to interrupt,’ Louisa wryly remarked from by the window, ‘but I believe the white horse has just galloped up!’

  Georgiana ran to the window and gazed out on to the sweep of gravel at the front of the house, full of pink evening sunlight and the long shadows of a summer dusk.

  ‘He’s here! He’s here!’ Like a child she bounced up and down in her excitement, her face so close to the glass that she misted the patch before her eyes and could no longer see him. As she hastily rubbed it clean he must have vanished into the house, for she turned with a joyous sigh back into the room.

  They waited over half an hour, while dusk wrapped itself about the house and candles were lit for Louisa to work at her knitting.

  This was a newly acquired skill that Louisa had learned from Annie, and she knew that Mama would be shocked. Knitting was the prerogative of cottage women or impoverished gentlewomen eking out a few extra pence from fine knitted stockings. At present, Louisa grimly considered that it was a skill that suited her situation perfectly, and she battled on defiantly, practising the different stitches Annie had demonstrated.

  Mother and daughter sat together and discussed Mr. Ferdinand. Louisa listened with amused exasperation, needles clicking.

  Eventually the study door was heard to shut and footsteps approached their room. With a brief knock and an expression to suit his name, Herring, the Grange butler, showed Mr. Ferdinand into the drawing-room.

  ‘John! Mr. Ferdinand!’ Her face radiating delight, Georgiana danced forward. ‘You have his consent? John?’

  She paused uncertainly as she gazed at him. His face was white, as if in shock, and rigidly tense, his fists clenched tight against his thighs in barely controlled anger.

  ‘John?’ she faltered. ‘What is wrong? Whatever has happened? Oh, John, tell me!’

  The shuddering breath he drew was clearly audible from where Louisa was sitting, her knitting forgotten on her lap as she stared at him, shocked. Plain to see, too, was the effort it took him to speak calmly. Gently he took Georgiana’s anxious hands and held them between his own. As he gazed down at her upturned face, a spasm of pain crossed his features, but his voice was steady when he spoke to her.

  ‘Your father has not seen fit to approve me, my dear. In fact, he has forbidden me to see you again, or even to call at this house.’ His voice shook a little.

  ‘But, John—’

  ‘No, let me explain before you speak. Don’t worry. I will not let all be lost between us.’ He sounded unusually grim. ‘Your father, as I said, was incensed by my visit. He informed me that his consent to pay court to you he had already given to another, and that being so I could take myself off, he did not want to be bothered. I held my temper in check—I had to, with you, my love, at stake—and told him you did not care for Mr. Blane. I had all your affection. He would not listen to me. I explained Mr. Blane’s foul behaviour at Aleminster, and disclosed all that Hetta has written from London of his ruinous debts, derelict estates, and even that he is suspected of outright cheating at the tables.’

  The ladies listened, open-mouthed in horror at this new aspect of Mr. Blane’s character.

  ‘Surely then he understood?’ Georgiana breathed pathetically.

  ‘Oh, no.’ John’s voice was steely with rage. ‘Your father informed me that no gentleman would come whining with malicious slander in order to outwit a rival, and I could take my foul gossip away with me. He announced that he might have made his money in trade, but he could tell the behaviour of a true gentleman, and it was not mine. But then, and beside this his insults to me were as nothing, then he cast aspersions on you, my love, the number of your admirers, and your treatment of them. I will not repeat what he said, I would not so foul my lips, and, indeed, I have already spoken unforgivably freely of your husband, ma’am, and I apologise.’

  He turned belatedly to Mrs. Addiscombe, seeming only just now to recollect that there were others in the room, but she merely shook her head, one hand over her mouth, apparently struck dumb by his revelations.

  ‘So I am forbidden to see you, my darling, and he says you are to be confined to the house.’ His jaw clenched in fury. ‘The things I could do ... I am sorry, ma’am, but the man is a monster!’

  Louisa was horrified by such rudeness, despite the justification, but was astounded to hear Mrs. Addiscombe’s reply.

  ‘Yes, you are right. Oh, what have I done to saddle my dear daughter with such an ogre for a father, who would brutally incarcerate her to pine away forever between these four walls?’ Her handkerchief came into play as her voice quavered and broke. ‘True love forever blighted, and all the result of my own youthful folly!’

  She paused to dab away a few tears amid the stunned silence that greeted this outburst. Despite everything, Louisa was very afraid she might disgrace herself and laugh.

  ‘I don’t think it need be quite so desperate,’ John responded carefully, with a dubious glance at his hoped-for mother-in-law. ‘Perhaps you could give your support to my plan?’

  ‘Anything!’ This agonised response set the plump cheeks quivering again, and Georgiana ran to hug her mother.

  ‘Dearest Mama, don’t distress yourself. John will find a solution.’ She turned to him. ‘What is your plan?’

  ‘I intend to travel immediately to London to call on Sir Philip Mondfort. You have written to your aunt, have you not, concerning Mr. Blane?’

  Georgiana nodded.

  ‘I will tell them of events here, and demand their blessing on my suit, so that I have the right to protect you. Nothing is going to stand in the way of our love. Be strong, my darling. Now I must leave you. I do not believe your father intended me even to come and bid you farewell, and I would not wish to give him the satisfaction of throwing me from his house! More important, I wish to prepare at once for my journey.’

  Georgiana clasped his hands.

  ‘Hurry, my love. I will be waiting for you.’

  He nodded, clasped her briefly to him, and, with a terse goodnight, swung on his heels and left.

  ‘I will be strong!’ Georgiana breathed.

  ‘Oh, my dear, yes. Strong in this awful affliction,’ her
mother sighed dolefully.

  The tea-tray just then arriving, Louisa merely reserved her strength for pouring out.

  The tea was barely cool enough to sip at comfortably when the three ladies were astounded to hear the clatter and crunch of a carriage and horses once more crossing the gravel to the front door. They paused, cups suspended in their hands, staring wide-eyed and questioning at each other as they strained their ears. Louisa’s brief, irrational hopes had only time to flutter into life before they were dashed as a strident lady’s voice was heard in the hall.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Herring. Well, look alive, now you have made an appearance. I shall want a bedroom made ready immediately, for the journey was not good. The bed must be warmed, and I think a light meal of cold meats on a tray would suit me best. Yes, have it sent up to wait for me.’

  ‘Lord preserve us,’ breathed Mrs. Addiscombe. ‘It’s Alvira!’

  ‘Don’t just stand there goggling, man. Where’s my niece? She’s the cause of all this upheaval. Well, show me in, show me in!’

  The door opened abruptly, and Herring, purple about the gills, announced in stifled tones, ‘Lady Mondfort, ma’am.’

  ‘I don’t know why you keep that fool of a man, Hermione—he stands goggling like a perfect blockhead when given even the simplest of instructions. How are you? Fancying yourself ill again, I suppose? Shocking waste of your time. And what about you, my girl? Still here, I see, so I trust I am in time to sort out all these problems you gabbled about in your letter. Did no one ever teach you to write in legible English? James Blane, indeed! Shocking man! No reputation—not accepted anywhere. You always were an utter fool, Hermione! And you must be Miss Stapely. Well, if I gathered anything from my niece’s letter, it seems that you, at least, have a sound head on your shoulders, and I dare say I have much to thank you for, if the truth be known, in warning Georgiana against that man.