Unless…it was a small hope…unless the idea of hunting from London to York just happened to catch their imagination. Acts that were wild or eccentric—or even plain lunatic—would always intrigue the English upper class. The hope was slim, but it was the only one she had.
She got Beador to write an amused and amusing letter to Mr. Hollingworth Magniac, Master of the Oakley, telling him of Mrs. Stevenson's mad notion and begging his hunt's assistance. Beador's own response was reassuring—he thought it a "ripping good idea" and gladly added Fontana to the travelling stable of two hunters she had brought down from Yorkshire. Since Stevenson's now owned Sir George right down to the buttons on his shirt, she thought that most generous.
He was in very good humour. Later she found out why.
After dinner she wrote a brisk, chatty letter to Chambers, telling him of her notion and in every way—she hoped—putting him at his ease. It was exactly the sort of letter she would have written if they'd had two hundred thousand in the bank instead of less than nothing.
Flynn, she found, had already gone recruiting in Hertford. John certainly picked his men well.
She was about to retire when Sarah knocked at her door. She came in bubbling with excitement; all evening she had brimmed with some secret mirth. Nora had not seen her like that since the day she and Sam had arrived at Coutances.
"You'll never guess," she said. "Sir George has asked me to marry him!"
Nora was thunderstruck.
"Think!" Sarah babbled. "Lady Beador! Me—a Lady! From scullery maid to Lady!"
It was her money, of course. Somehow Beador had got a sniff of it. He must have a nose for money better than any hound for any fox. But if Sarah took her money out now…
"Aren't you pleased, Nora dear?"
Nora made herself smile. "If it's really what you want. If it will really make you happy. But why Sir George?"
Sarah giggled. "Because he asked, I suppose. No one else has."
"And that's all it needs? The ability to put you, me, and the verb to marry in their proper grammatical relationship?"
"Of course not!" Sarah blushed. "You're a bit sharp, anyway. I thought you liked him. He admires you enormously."
Nora waited. At length she asked, "Am I to be content with that snippet of intelligence: 'Sir George likes me'?"
Sarah blushed again: "What more?"
"Do you love him, you goose?"
"I like him."
"What in particular? His frank and open way with money, for instance?"
Sarah actually laughed. "He's told me all about that. I think it's so generous of you to let him stay on here."
Nora's heart missed a beat—and the next beat was a huge thump that shook her whole body—and the bed. "All?" she asked guardedly.
"Well, it was only ten thousand pounds. Or…oh, I know one shouldn't say only ten thousand pounds. But he has learned his lesson. And when we've repaid you and bought back Maran Hill, we shall live ever so quietly. He's promised that. We shall have to live quietly because all my money will be gone."
To Nora it was the final blow. After she and John had done so much to guard against the enemy without, the fatal wound was to come from the friend within.
It was not fair. Of all the things they could have foreseen and prevented, how could they possibly have foreseen this? Yet now it had happened it looked so inevitable—so predictable, even, given the different natures of Sarah and Sir George.
And why-oh-why had she asked Sarah to come? It had been the merest afterthought. Anything could have intervened—any distraction. Winifred with a dead bird, Mrs. Jordan wanting her daily orders, even a fit of coughing—if any of these had happened at the right moment, she would never have invited Sarah on this visit.
"What did he say when you accepted his proposal?" Nora asked. She might as well put a date to disaster.
"Oh, I've not told him yet. I'll tell him tomorrow. Or the day after. Soon anyway."
It gave Nora the only hope she had. "Sarah," she said, "I think the very least you can do is not to rush into it."
Sarah drew breath, already shaking her head, smiling radiantly.
"Please listen," Nora went on. "The least you can do is talk to John. After all he is a sort of unofficial guardian to you—a trustee of your fortune. And he was a very good friend to Tom. He would be most…"
She stopped as soon as she saw the effect of her words. By chance—chance again—she had chosen the one thing that would reach, spinning down through all that froth of excited sentiment, right down to the very core of Sarah's being: the memory of Tom.
She did not let the moment slip. "You didn't say you loved Sir George."
Sarah did not look up. "I will never love any other man." Now all the fighting exuberance had gone. "I know that. I'm not such a fool as to look for love again."
"What then? Liking? Is Sir George really the most likeable?"
Sarah looked trapped. "I thought you would understand."
"Understand what?"
"I need someone. I can't go on being alone." She turned bright pink. "You must know what I mean."
Now Nora too was embarrassed. "I think it's essential you should talk to John," she said.
"I can't tell him that!"
"I don't think you'll need to."
"Don't you tell him!" She was even more alarmed.
"Of course I won't. But there's no man with more understanding—and you'll find no truer friend."
"I know." She sighed. "You are quite right, of course. Poor George, he will be so disappointed! How can I face him?"
"You won't have to for long," Nora assured her, and she went on to explain her idea of hunting all the way home. "Sir George called it a 'ripping idea,' and he must know I need a chaperone—so he can hardly object if I take you, since it was I who brought you!"
Chapter 26
When they left the following day, the eastern end of the park had already begun to fill with tattered bivouacs and shelters of thorn and tarpaulin. Around and among them lounged villainous men with pocked faces and broken teeth. There was a handful of verminous women too, and even a few sickly children. Rubbish already littered the park and highway. Mangy cats and dogs with lice nosed and fought among it. Half the people there were drunk; the rest were well on the way. Fires were lighted everywhere against the cold, and bands of ruffians were bursting out of the Panshanger woods carrying ripped-off branches and uprooted saplings.
As their carriage went by, Nora smiling, Sarah aghast, Flynn came riding over.
He gave a huge wink. "Sure we'll just let them wet their whistles a bit longer, then we'll start winning this gravel."
"Then we'll start winning," Nora said, like a correction. "You can control them?"
"Like the tap on a beer keg." Flynn laughed.
"I'll write and tell you when to stop. Remember—you take your orders from no one but me."
Flynn gave a jaunty military salute and withdrew.
Even Sarah was smiling. "I've never seen you like this, Nora. What is it?" she asked.
"I'm going to do what I haven't done in five years: please myself. I think if the world was to end in three weeks, I'd do no different."
She meant it too. Her words were no mere bravado. She was going to live every minute of the next three weeks like a hedonist. No thought of the future, whether it was to be spent in jail or exile or even in restored fortune—no thought of it was to mar those living moments as they were given to her.
It was infectious, of course. Sarah caught it first, being nearest, and she soon forgot to mope for her disconsolate Sir George (who had seen them off with very ill grace). And Mr. Hollingworth Magniac, Master of the Oakley, caught it the moment he read Nora's letter of introduction.
And Nora hunted like a mad Irishman—and in the hunting field none are madder. If a gate was open, she'd jump the fence beside it. If a winding lane led to where she wanted to go, she'd cross two furlongs of field to cut the corner. She fell off all four sides of all three hors
es. She fell into mires. She was wiped off and left hanging by branches. She half-drowned in ditches. She was dragged backwards and sideways through hedges. Yet when it came to a hulloa and a gallop and a death, she was on terms to the end. She leaped the most fearsome raspers of hedges, where even cavalry ensigns—even Irish cavalry ensigns— turned aside. It was the sort of exhibition she usually despised, but she knew that nothing less would serve her purpose.
The Oakley gave her the brush of the only fox they broke up that day. The Pytchley, under Mr. George Payne, gave her two brushes—and three rousing cheers, for she enjoyed the first day's hunting with them so much she stayed for a second.
And then word began to spread of this dashing, spirited young Yorkshirewoman who was hunting her way home. Lord Fitzwilliam gave an impromptu ball for her at Milton Park and she danced until dawn. Ninety minutes later they were all back in the saddle and drawing their first covert as if the season had just begun.
Sir Richard Sutton said it was the biggest meet the Cottesmore had seen that year. Everyone wanted to see her, shake her hand, watch her fly—or fall.
Invitations arrived from hunts that were off her direct route home—the Quorn, Earl Ferrers, the Meynell…even from the Bedale, well to the north of her destination. She took in as many as she could. Only Lord Middleton's, which hunted all around Thorpe and which had turned her down, remained silent—the one hunt, above all others, that she longed to join.
From Lord Galway's hunt the Master, Mr. Richard Lumley, came with an escort of riders to flank her carriage up the Great North Road to Retford. Four days she hunted with them.
Lord Hawke, Master of the Badsworth (her final hunt before her own York & Ainsty), held a presentation dinner with silver-edged invitations and programmes; the presentation was an illuminated map showing her erratic journey through the hunting countries of eastern England. Each of the hunt masters had signed their portion of the map, and each hunt had sent a brush—even those that had broken up no fox while she was in their country. She could hardly thank them for the tears in her eyes.
But best of all was the letter awaiting her at York from Lord Wyatt. "You have won your wager," he wrote. "I do not grudge you your victory. To the contrary: I salute you. As evidence I return the deeds of Framwell, which Beador also mortgaged to me. They are now free of any charge upon them. The deeds to the farms will follow in some six weeks."
Framwell was Beador's estate near Stockton.
Wrapped in the folds of the letter was a draft, to her, for a hundred thousand pounds.
She was ungrateful enough to regret that the excitement was over—and that she must learn again to be the sort of woman who would find that sort of regret childish and irresponsible.
Chapter 27
When the train drew into York station, bringing John back from his exile, it was not Nora but Sarah who waited to greet him on the platform.
He gave her a brotherly kiss and said, "What's up then?"
Sarah smiled. "I did not understand it either until we arrived here. I felt I would be excessively de trop. But, of course, Nora cannot waste a visit to York, and as Mr. Hudson is in the city…"
"Ah! Say no more! And we are to wait for her?"
They climbed into the carriage, which was standing outside the Railway Office. An urchin was holding the horses.
"We sent Willet to collect some dress lengths and other things." Sarah explained. "I hope he hurries. It'll soon be dark."
They sat facing each other in the gloom of the carriage while the cold January twilight deepened around them. John stifled a yawn and apologized.
"You must have had a hard month of it," she said.
"It's the irregularity, not the hardness."
"But it must be a great comfort to know that Nora is looking after her end of things. It's a perfect arrangement."
John agreed.
"Even now. When she knows you are in York, after nearly four weeks away. Even so—she is busy at your interests."
He chuckled and tapped the window lightly, three knocks. "What's in thy mind, lass?"
She leaned forward into the fading light and looked at him intently. "I shall never understand people, John."
"Well, which of us ever does? Given a long life, we may come to understand one or two well enough. And learn a trick or ten for coping with t'others—or keeping out their way. What's the particular puzzle?"
She shook her head and retired again into the dark. "Do you think I should accept Sir George Beador's proposal?"
"You needn't worry about Beador," he said. "We're not throwing him out. He can stay on as a sort of pensioner up at Framwell."
"I feel so sorry for him though."
"That's no substitute for love. In your letter you made it quite clear it would be no love match."
"Love!" she said, almost with mockery. "I came to it so strangely with Tom. Now I think it an accident—intended for some other."
When she added no more he asked: "What do you mean? Came to it so strangely?"
He could not see her face now. She became a voice speaking out from the shadows. "My mother and father were like two cordial strangers sharing an abode for convenience, I believe he overcame his aversion for…for anything… stronger…long enough to beget me. And after that—never again. You understand what I'm speaking about?"
He nodded.
She continued. "I wonder now how my mother felt about that. Though she seemed content enough always. And then when he died and she followed him so soon, you see, I was at once cut off from all example of domestic life between the sexes. All I had ever known was that very dull…at least, now I call it dull, then it seemed secure and eternal…but life at the vicarage was dull."
"And you went straight from that to the Church Commissioners girls' orphanage? That was even less preparation."
"Well…" she said doubtfully.
He waited.
"I did not tell you all," she said. Her voice was trembling; he could hear the fear in her pushing it from her control.
"Nor do you need to," he said.
"I do. I do." She was past stopping. But as she spoke, the fear seemed to lift from her. The effort had been to start. "May I tell you something, John? I never thought I would tell anyone. I never told Tom. But since he is dead the thought of it keeps coming back."
"If you are sure of never regretting it."
"I'm sure of that. With you it will be safe."
"I don't mean that. I mean it might be better to talk with a complete outsider." Her exasperation cut him short. "Or a woman—Nora? Have you told her?"
She thought hard before she answered. "It's a man's view I need. That's what I don't know."
"Very well. I hope I'm the right person."
She breathed in, steeling herself again. "You and Nora sometimes mention a Reverend Doctor Prendergast, now bishop in Manchester I think."
John sat upright suddenly, startled out of his role of passive sympathizer. "Go on."
She hesitated again. "You will remember that although I was born a vicar's daughter, I have seen quite a different level of life since then. You will not be shocked if I speak of…things that a vicar's daughter…"
"That is not the fear," he warned again. "The fear is that, however I respond, you will regret speaking of it at all. What of Prendergast?"
"When I first heard you mention him to Nora, last autumn"—she laughed—"I was so startled! I thought—now you will be ashamed of me—I thought, I suspected…" She faltered.
"You suspected that from the little you told me that morning at Coutances I had made investigations and found out something."
She was astounded. "How do you know that! I'm ashamed to have suspected you."
"But why? It would be very human. Tell me about Prendergast. Is it the same man?"
"It must be. He knew my father, I think. Or so he claimed. He came to the orphanage just after I went in there, and they let him take me out to tea. Of course, they would." There was quite a silence before she co
ntinued. "He offered to take me away from there. I thought he meant to adopt me, because that's what it sounded like." She giggled nervously. "I was only sixteen then."
The Rich Are with You Always Page 28