by Beth Andrews
‘What do you mean?’ I demanded, eyeing him with rather less approbation.
‘Only that you’re as much a part of this as any of us.’ He shrugged. ‘This is as much your affair as mine and Jemima’s.’
‘Janetta’s.’ Sophia and I corrected him in unison.
Janetta just stood there like a lump, looking mighty bewildered.
‘For Heaven’s sake, girl,’ I said in some exasperation, ‘kiss the man!’
M’Kenrie took the hint, even if she did not. Rising from his knee, he grabbed her in his arms with some ferocity and bestowed a passionate kiss upon her unprepared lips.
‘That’s better!’ I said with approval.
‘It certainly is!’ Janetta agreed wholeheartedly.
‘Not bad, I must admit.’ The captain appeared pleasantly surprised.
‘What shall we do now?’ Janetta enquired, looking up at the man who could now officially be termed her lover.
‘Your father will never give his consent to our union,’ he said flatly.
‘I should hope not!’ Sophia commented.
‘You must elope,’ I pointed out what seemed absurdly obvious. ‘There is no other option.’
‘Elope!’ Janetta looked terrified. ‘To Gretna Green?’
At last our protégée had conceived a plan which was all I could have wished for. I could not refrain from giving her a congratulatory hug.
‘A capital notion!’ I cried. ‘Nothing could be so frightfully romantic.’
‘Nothing could be so frightfully expensive, and at a considerable distance from MacDonald Hall,’ Captain M’Kenrie added.
‘Nor is it really necessary,’ Janetta put in. ‘One only goes to Gretna if one is eloping from England, since it is so near the border.’
‘Still,’ I persisted, ‘there is something about Gretna. No other town will do, I’m afraid.’
‘Besides,’ Sophia added rapturously, ‘what does distance matter to the heart?’
‘It’s not the heart, but the purse that’s the problem.’
‘You have not enough money?’ I asked in some consternation.
M’Kenrie cleared his throat and looked somewhat sheepish.
‘There are . . . debts . . . that must be paid, ma’am. A matter of honour, you understand.’
‘Gaming debts, you mean?’ Janetta’s eyes seemed likely to shoot out of their sockets like two bullets. ‘Are you a gamester, sir?’
He seemed to recognize that this revelation did nothing to advance his cause with the young lady, and hastened to undo the damage as speedily as possible.
‘That is all in the past, my sweet.’ He placed his arm around her and looked soulfully into her eyes. ‘From the moment I set eyes on you, I have been a changed man.’
Amazingly, this heartfelt speech did not seem to have much of an effect on the girl. She looked decidedly unconvinced.
‘Never mind,’ Sophia interrupted them. ‘I shall give you the money for the journey as a wedding present.’
‘Where did you get the money from, cousin?’ Janetta was all astonishment. ‘I thought you were quite destitute.’
Sophia never batted an eyelash.
‘I extracted it from the strongbox your father keeps in the drawer of his private desk.’
‘You stole it from Papa!’ Janetta gasped.
‘Stealing is a word which has such negative connotations,’ Sophia protested. ‘I find your use of it strongly offensive to myself.’
‘Besides,’ I added, ‘MacDonald deserves no better. Only think of his dastardly treatment of you and your gallant lover.’
‘But he has done nothing to either of us,’ Janetta pointed out with a return to her distressingly matter-of-fact attitude. ‘Indeed, he is perfectly ignorant of our attachment—as I was myself until just a few days ago.’
‘Why worry your head with such trifling matters?’ Sophia wondered aloud, adding, ‘In any case, your father will treat you both abominably once he learns of your scandalous elopement.’
‘There can be no doubt of that,’ I seconded.
‘But stealing,’ Janetta stubbornly insisted, ‘cannot be right.’
She crossed her arms, and it began to look as though she were going to be alarmingly stubborn on this point. I knew that I must try to make her understand the ways of the world, of which she was clearly much ignorant.
‘Right and wrong, good and evil,’ I said gently, as to a child, ‘are foolish distinctions which great souls like ourselves leave to those who are less enlightened.’
‘If right and wrong are essentially meaningless,’ she answered pertly, ‘then it stands to reason that you cannot possibly condemn Papa’s treatment of myself—or anybody’s treatment of anyone! It is all relative.’
The sudden intrusion of logic into the conversation overset me momentarily, but I recovered quickly.
‘Of course, certain actions are more . . . acceptable . . . than others, when done by certain persons who are more . . . enlightened. . . .’
‘This is nonsense!’ Janetta interrupted me quite rudely. ‘Has all you have told me been equally silly?’
‘Do not fling logic at us, my dear Janetta,’ Sophia said, painfully stung by her baseless accusations. ‘Some things are above reason, after all.’
‘And some are beneath contempt,’ M’Kenrie commented.
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, sir,’ Sophia replied.
‘Just give me the money, ma’am.’ The captain held out his hand, his eyes hard and cold. ‘I’ll take care of the rest.’
‘I don’t know about this,’ Janetta said, stepping back, and looking almost as if she were about to run away.
‘But I do!’
These words were spoken by M’Kenrie; and, to give him credit, he wasted no time in demonstrating why she should indeed elope with him. In a flash, she was in his arms and being thoroughly kissed once more, with a great deal of fondling and mauling besides. When he finally raised his head, Janetta was so overcome by emotion that she seemed about to swoon. I took this as the perfect time to whisk her away.
‘Do hurry, Sophia,’ I urged my friend. ‘We do not want MacDonald to apprehend them before they have even reached the high road.’
‘He’ll take the high road,’ M’Kenrie smiled. ‘But I’ll take the low road.’
With that, he grabbed the money in one hand and Janetta’s wrist in the other, practically dragging her out of the door with him. She looked back at us for a moment, helpless and with an air of indecision and regret. Then they were both gone from our sight, disappearing down the front steps towards the waiting carriage.
Chapter Thirteen
Sophia and I turned and went back into the house with a sigh of satisfaction.
‘We have set those two on the path to perfect happiness,’ she said, ‘but I am quite exhausted from all this philanthropy.’
‘You really should lie down, my dearest,’ I said with tender consideration.
We had just left the great hall and turned into the passage which led to our bedchambers, when Sophia stopped suddenly.
‘Oh, Heavens!’ she cried. ‘I have just remembered something.’
‘What is it?’
‘The banknotes which I gave to M’Kenrie were my last.’
‘You must certainly replenish your supply, then.’
She nodded in agreement, then turned and went another way along the corridor.
‘MacDonald’s study,’ she reminded me, ‘is this way.’
We opened the door and stepped into a dark, book-lined room with heavy, carved mahogany furniture, the whole dominated by a massive desk with a superfluity of drawers. Sophia went immediately to the correct one and withdrew a small box which was heavily bound in brass and locked securely.
Withdrawing a hatpin from her elaborate chapeau, she went to work at once, and it was clear that she was no novice in this particular art. Glancing around the room, meanwhile, I happened to spy a small Dresden figurine on a shelf, which was very pret
ty. I slipped it into my reticule and leaned over to observe Sophia’s abilities.
We were too involved to notice that the door—which we had carelessly left ajar—had opened to its fullest extent. It must have been several seconds before a movement to my left caused me to raise my head and look towards the entrance.
‘MacDonald!’ I cried, causing Sophia to drop everything just as the lock sprang open, scattering the contents on her lap.
It was the master of the Hall himself, glaring at us with an extremely grim expression on his face.
‘Do you not know, sir,’ Sophia confronted him at once, ‘that it is not at all good manners to insolently break in upon a lady in her retirement?’
MacDonald chose to ignore her lesson in etiquette.
‘Pray tell me, ma’am, what are you doing in my private chamber with my strongbox in your hands?’
‘I conceive that to be none of your business, sir.’ Sophia treated him to a look of haughty disdain.
‘I’ve noticed money missing on several occasions recently,’ he persisted, his stare more piercing than ever. ‘But however mentally deranged you might be, I could not bring myself to believe that you were no more than a common thief.’
‘How dare you refer to me as “common”!’ Sophia cried, rising from her seat in righteous indignation, and dislodging a banknote which dangled jauntily from the open strongbox.
‘I beg pardon, strumpet,’ MacDonald shot back.
I could not stand idly by while my friend was being subjected to such Turkish treatment by this ruffian. I sprang to her defence at once.
‘You little know your cousin,’ I said, giving him stare for stare, ‘if you can accuse her of an act of which the merest idea must make her blush.’
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘And if she did blush, it could only be from shame.’
‘Base miscreant!’ Sophia shouted at him. ‘To attempt to sully my spotless reputation!’
‘Well then, madam.’ MacDonald was dangerously calm. ‘If you were not robbing me, pray tell me what you were doing.’
I thought for a moment, casting about in my mind for a suitable explanation.
‘She was gracefully purloining a few pounds whose loss someone in your position would scarcely even notice—and which should have been placed at her disposal, in any case, as your honoured guest.’
MacDonald folded his arms across his chest and raised a brow at this.
‘In that case,’ he said through clenched teeth, ‘I will not throw you out of my house. I shall merely assist you in departing my residence with all possible speed: something which I should have done some weeks ago!’
I could see that Sophia was wounded to the heart by his perfidious behaviour.
‘And when I think,’ she said, lips trembling, ‘of the singular service which we have lately rendered to your lovely daughter, I do not know how you have the heart to accuse either of us.’
‘Singular service?’ His brows drew together, and his voice rumbled like distant thunder.
Then the story of our Herculean labours on Janetta’s behalf came out, mingled with many a tear and sigh as we lingered on the difficulties we had encountered with his headstrong daughter.
Naturally, we did not expect him to approve his daughter’s match, but I still consider his response to have been somewhat excessive.
‘You have thrown my daughter into the arms of an unprincipled fortune-hunter,’ he exclaimed at the conclusion of our touching narrative. ‘Thanks to you, she will be ruined forever.’
‘We merely performed the duty of true friendship,’ Sophia corrected him.
‘I am sure,’ his lip curled as he spoke, ‘that Elizabeth Tudor never did more for Mary Queen of Scots!’
‘Thank you, sir,’ I said, speaking for us both.
‘Get out,’ was all his answer.
This was followed by a deplorable contravention of traditional Scottish hospitality, in which he dragged us, kicking and screaming, out of the house by our hair. We were cast down the front steps like so much rubbish, and a servant subsequently threw our belongings out of an upstairs window onto the lawn, for us to collect at our leisure.
Even as we tumbled down the stone stairway, I could hear MacDonald’s voice threatening to set Darcy upon us. Recalling that this was the name of the ferocious hound which had so frightened Sophia on our first night at MacDonald Hall, we wasted no time on grace and decorum, but ran as fast as we could down the drive.
Our one bit of good fortune was that Sophia very soon discovered in the lining of her coat, where it lay on the freshly cut grass, one of the purloined banknotes which she had squirrelled away the week before and quite forgotten.
Clutching our satchels, containing what remained of our belongings, we trudged past the gates for the last time, whiling away the minutes by berating MacDonald for his contemptible treatment, his pernicious ingratitude, and his crudity which had so distressed our exalted minds. Indeed, that is the one defect of possessing an exalted mind: it is too easily distressed to be long comfortable.
We had walked just over a mile from MacDonald Hall before we sat down to refresh our tired limbs. It was a sweet spot, sheltered by a grove of elms from the east and a bed of nettles from the west. Before us ran a babbling brook, and behind us the turnpike road which was to prove so significant in the perils which would continue to distress us.
Chapter Fourteen
I must now warn those who peruse these pages to prepare themselves, for the most pathetic, the most alarming, the most heart-wrenching part of my tale is almost upon you. Read on, therefore, at your peril!
We untied our bonnets and reclined in the shade, supported by our baggage.
‘What a lovely scene!’ I said at last. ‘If only Edward and Augustus were here to share it with us.’
‘Oh, Laura!’ Sophia cried soulfully. ‘What would I not give to learn the fate of my Augustus: to know if he is still in Newgate or if he has already been hanged.’
I placed my arm about her shoulders, attempting to comfort her.
‘Shall we return to London, then, dearest?’
‘By no means.’ She shook her head in a decided negative. ‘I shall never be able to conquer my tender sensibility enough to enquire after my beloved. I do not think I can even bear to hear his name again.’
‘Never,’ I vowed, ‘shall I again offend your feelings by mentioning him.’
‘Thank you, my dear friend.’
I looked around once more, observing the wild scenery and breaking out rhapsodically, ‘Look, Sophia, at the noble grandeur of those elms which shelter us from the eastern zephyr!’
‘Yes, the elms.’ Sophia gave a sigh of utmost sadness. ‘Alas, they remind me of my Augustus. Like them, he was tall and majestic. Do not mention elms, my Laura.’
‘No elms,’ I murmured, committing this to memory.
In the meantime, I wondered silently what I might say which would not burden Sophia by reminding her of her husband. The sun might remind her of his hair, and the moon of his teeth. The stars would recall the twinkle in his eyes and the water his chamber pot. For several minutes I remained silent, until Sophia’s plaintive voice prodded me to attempt further conversation.
‘Why do you not speak, Laura?’ she asked, in some concern. ‘This silence leaves me to my own thoughts, which always return to my Augustus.’
‘What a beautiful sky!’ I declared, which was the first thing that occurred to me. ‘Just look how the azure is varied by those delicate streaks of white cloud.’
Sophia glanced up at the sky in question for a moment, then looked down as tears began to stream from her eyes.
‘Oh, Laura,’ she wailed, ‘do not distress me by calling my attention to an object which so cruelly reminds me of Augustus’s blue satin waistcoat with white stripes.’
‘Forgive me, Sophia.’
‘With pleasure, Laura.’
Her tears gradually ceased, but the silence continued for some minutes. In truth, I had exhausted my store
of innocuous comments and knew not what else to say.
Happily, the uncomfortable silence was broken in a most unexpected manner. A low, rumbling noise in the distance had been growing ever nearer, and suddenly there was the sound of horses braying wildly in fear, followed by a terrific crash and the groans of men in severe distress.
Turning our heads, Sophia and I at once spied an overturned phaeton upon the road only a few hundred yards away from us. We surveyed the wreckage with considerable interest as we sat there in mute contemplation for several seconds.
‘What a fortunate occurrence,’ I remarked at last to my companion. ‘Now your mind must be diverted from more melancholy thoughts.’
‘Yes indeed,’ she agreed. ‘I am now so engrossed in the scene before me that I can hardly think of anything else.’
At this, we both stood up, craning our necks in order to obtain a better view of the calamity.
‘To think,’ I wondered aloud, ‘that but a few moments ago these unlucky travellers were elevated so high, but now are laid low and sprawling in the dust.’
By now the horses had managed to break free of the wreckage and were running off, leaving the stricken passengers to their fate.
‘That phaeton,’ Sophia said, pointing to the carnage, ‘and the life of Cardinal Wolsey, provide us ample reflection on the uncertain enjoyments of this world, do they not?’
‘It cannot be denied.’
Sophia placed one delicate finger against her chin, considering what to do next. It was a philosophical and ethical conundrum, to be sure.
‘Should we perhaps go and see whether we can provide aid to those so afflicted?’
‘That might relieve the tedium of our day,’ I said.
We strolled towards the wreckage, picking our way slowly and carefully through the tall grass, where thorns encroached and would have torn our delicate skirts had we not been so mindful of them. So we crossed the small field and arrived at the road.
As we drew nearer, we could plainly perceive the prostrate figures of two well-dressed gentlemen. Only a few feet from these poor victims of cruel misfortune, we stopped dead in our tracks. Both of us had perceived something so unexpected and so horrifying as to deprive us of breath and mobility at once: one of the men was plainly attired in a blue-and-white striped waistcoat exactly like the one so lately mentioned by Sophia.