The woman gave her a friendly nod. “Come along, then, Susan.”
She did not like feeling like a parcel, to be handed on without knowing her destination or having any control. But there was really no choice.
“Tell my auntie I’ll come see her my next free day.”
“Ay.” Alice clambered up onto the wagon seat, followed more slowly by Jane, with Jack Ridgeley’s assistance. She hoped she could get down without help.
Alice drove out of the yard and into the road. Before Jane had had time to accustom herself to the height of the wagon seat above the ground, they had passed the last of the cottages. Hedgerows grew on either side, cutting off any view of fields or herds. We are deep in the country. No one could possibly find me here.
Alice, for all her hard-bitten appearance, was good company. She kept up a flow of observations about the weather, the crops, the reason she never wore a hat (“They flap around and get in the way. Try milking in a broad-brimmed hat.”), and how it was no use for a countrywoman to expect to keep a white complexion. Jane uttered an occasional “Oh?” or “Ah!” which was encouragement enough for Alice and concealed Jane’s upper-class speech.
“I’m pleased to have a reason to visit my daughter,” Alice remarked. “She lives only a mile or two from Jack’s aunt.” She added, “My daughter’s new baby is Susan, too. I’ve always liked that name. It makes me think of daisies; I don’t know why.”
They had come several miles and left the hedgerows behind, affording a view of fields broken by bands of trees, with distant hills for a background.
“A few more miles to go,” Alice was saying when Jane, glancing back, saw a rider approaching at a gallop. She nudged Alice and gave a quick jerk of her head back the way they’d come. The woman turned her head to look.
“ ’Tis Jack.”
Alice must be very farsighted, Jane thought. She would not have recognized the groom at such a distance, though it would help that Alice must know him well. The rider waved his hat over his head and shouted something. By then, the cooper’s wife had pulled up. Jack brought his horse to a halt and looked over his shoulder.
“Jack?” Alice and Jane traded glances.
“Sorry…Susan is needed at home. Your mother is ill.”
“She is?” Her voice squeaked a little.
He cast her a meaningful look. “Terrible ill, and wants to see you before…”
Oh. “That ill?” She gathered her wits. Of course he wasn’t talking about her late mother or even her stepmother.
“Ay, and you’re sent for. There’s no time to waste. You’ll ride back behind me to catch the stage.”
“That’s a good horse,” Alice remarked.
“I borrowed it of Farmer Mason. Breeds good stock. I left the wagon and Bessie as security for it. Mason knows Mr. Ashton would pay up for any harm to his horse.”
“Mr. Ashton is one of the best. Then Susan must go. Just bring that nag closer, boy, and she can get up behind you with no trouble.”
Jane murmured her thanks to Alice and stood as Jack’s mount sidled close beside the cart. The wagon was steady, and the horse content to stand and rest, but the prospect of making the transition to the back of Jack’s horse was a little daunting. It wasn’t actually moving, but it looked as if it might do so at any moment. Jack swiveled in the saddle and extended a hand to steady her. If they had to travel fast, she could not perch sideways on the horse’s rump, not without falling off. He evidently did not mean her to ride before him, for which she was grateful; that would have been uncomfortably intimate. The horse’s rump was directly before her.
She swung her leg out and over the animal, feeling awkward. The front of her skirt and petticoats caught between her legs so they were between her bare skin and the glossy brown hide when she dropped onto the horse. It felt very strange to bestride the horse, and because the front of her skirts was between her legs and under her, her limbs were outlined, almost as if she were wearing breeches. At least she had not slid backward to land ignominiously on the ground. The back of her skirt fell over the horse’s tail, and she must hope the horse did not produce droppings.
Riding astride was not something she had ever done, although she had seen country girls do it. They seemed to have less difficulty controlling their skirts. Did she appear indecent? It all felt terribly immodest, especially when she wrapped her arms around Jack’s torso to hold on. If the male body she was hugging had been Alex’s, it would have been different. Embarrassing, perhaps, but…different. She ended the thought abruptly. She smiled her farewell to Alice and hoped her face was not pink, or if it were, that the woman would think it was excitement or exertion.
With a nod to Alice and a brief “Are you secure, Susan?” to her, Jack turned their mount, and they cantered away.
As soon as they were out of sight of the cart, Jack spurred the horse.
“What’s amiss, Jack?”
“After I saw you off from Littlefield, I heard a fellow had been asking about the maid I brought there this morning. Seemingly someone picked up your trail right quick. If he kept asking, he may have found someone who saw you leave with Alice.”
They came to a tidy farm Jane had admired when they passed it, and Jack reined the horse in to a trot and turned into the track to the house, then branched off onto a path past the fields toward woodland. The leaves were beginning to turn, harbinger of autumn and cold, dark nights. She shivered with apprehension rather chill.
“We ride cross-country from here. I want to be off the roads.” Jack’s manner was no longer that of a bashful young groom. He sounded older and more decisive. His previous rustic manner might go no deeper than her own disguise as a maid or her earlier pose as an unemployed governess.
“What shall we do?”
“That’s what I don’t know. I’ve no orders to guide me. It never seemed I’d need them, only to deliver you to Littlefield and pass you on. Mr. Cheddle’s needle-sharp, but he can’t have expected them to see through our plan. All I do know is I’ve got to get you away to some safe place. They must want you desperate bad, whoever they are.”
They followed the path and then a cart track without seeing another village or even a house or cottage, except at a distance. A great deal of the country seemed to be almost empty, a startling discovery for one who had always lived in London. Even when her family went to Bath or Tunbridge Wells in the summer, they seldom left the main coaching roads and signs of civilization.
“Haymaking’s finished. It’s as well for us.”
The fields they passed were down to stubble, with no laborers in sight, and no one to see their passage, Jane understood. “You must know this countryside very well.”
“Ay, I grew up not far from Littlefield. Maybe ten miles north from where we are now. We’ll go there. If the master’s there, he’ll know what to do.”
“Should we involve someone else? We would have to explain the situation. Mr. Lattimer might not approve.”
A pause. “My old master, Mr. Grantham, knows Mr. Lattimer. Mr. Grantham will understand. And if he’s not in residence, we’ll still have a place to stay, and I’ll send a message to Mr. Lattimer.”
They passed from ordinary countryside into a wood with huge, gnarled trees, following a narrow, dim track overhung by branches. It might have led them from the modern world to some earlier period. She almost expected a troop of King John’s men or a procession of druids to pass and suppressed a shiver. Their gradual emergence from deep forest into a scattering of trees and then into a sunlit meadow came as a relief.
Her legs and thighs ached before Jack reined in at the top of a rise. A road in good repair lay before them, though clearly not a coaching road.
“A’most there,” he said, jerking his chin to the right.
A large house stood off to the side of the road beyond a small lake. Of light gray stone, its long façade was broken by evenly-spaced windows pedimented in the Palladian style, and tall columns flanked the entrance. “Is that where we’re goi
ng? It’s very impressive.”
Jack chuckled. “Ay, Mr. Grantham built it a few years since, when he came into some money. Mind, it’s not half as deep as it is wide. Not much land, either. He didn’t want to be bothered with a pack of tenants, so there’s only a home farm and some parkland. The building in back is the stable and carriage house. They say it’s made to look like a Roman temple or some such thing.”
“I see,” she said faintly. She had supposed the smaller building to be the dower house.
****
Mr. Grantham stared at Jane, who stared back. Jack had introduced her and given a concise account of who she was and why she needed help, and then was dismissed, to her dismay.
Grantham said, “I can’t think why Lattimer chose to involve a lady in such a matter. It was quite improper, and this is what comes of it.”
She did not explain that she had no choice but to be involved. Jack and the Hawthorn Cottage folk did not know how it had come about, and Mr. Lattimer had instructed her not to tell them. Would he have agreed that Grantham should be told? She didn’t know, and she was reluctant to do so. She had not taken a liking to him.
“And you cannot remain here,” he went on, “as my wife is not in residence. It seems to me the Hawthorn Cottage staff took fright too easily. Jack Ridgeley was always sensible enough when he was employed here, but servants take their tone from their employers.”
Ridgeley was a servant of Mr. Ashton, surely? Yet Grantham’s disdain was for Lattimer.
“Then I will have to write to Mr. Lattimer,” she said briskly. “Is there somewhere I can stay while I wait for him to tell me what he would like me to do? Some woman who would take me as a lodger for a few days or a week? I saw an inn, but it would certainly be unsuitable for me to stay there without a maid.”
“As it happens, I know Lattimer is away at the moment. I don’t know when he will return to London. I believe the only possible course of action is for you to go back to Town. Surely you have family or friends to whom you can return?”
“It would be awkward to explain, as I am supposed to be staying in the country. However, I could go—” She had meant to say to my uncle’s house, but changed her mind. “—to the home of a friend.”
“Very good. I’ve no doubt you’ll be perfectly safe there.”
If indeed there was any danger to you, he must be thinking.
“If you wish, I will send you in my coach.”
The grudging note in his voice was plain. “I will not put you to such inconvenience, sir. If Jack can take me to the nearest posting inn, I will go by stage. No one will notice me, dressed like a maidservant.”
Chapter 25
She was exhausted and sore when she arrived at the Oxford Arms, the stage’s London terminus. Since Ridgeley had seen her safely aboard the stage hours previously she had been jolted and bounced over rough roads, beside a woman with a crying baby and a little girl suffering from travel sickness who had vomited out the window several times. She would almost have preferred sitting next to the man with breath like an open sewer or the young man who stared at her as if he were undressing her. The coach stopped to change horses, but such pauses were brief—enough time for a male passenger to pour a pint of ale down his throat or for a visit to the necessary house behind the inn, but not to really stretch one’s legs or eat.
Thank goodness it had been only a day’s journey. Many travelled long distances in such vehicles, spending several days on the road. She had heard from her uncle that in his youth the trip from Edinburgh to London had taken as much as ten days. Thank goodness, too, she had had a seat inside. Those with less money rode on the roof, which must be extremely uncomfortable. It would often be necessary to keep a tight grip on the low rail around the top, choked by dust in dry weather or drenched if it rained. Horrid!
At least no one except the leering young man had paid the slightest attention to her. Ridgeley had contrived to deliver her not long before the stage’s arrival and paid her fare so she would not betray herself by her upper-class diction. He had stayed to see her off, as though she were his sister or sweetheart, to discourage anyone from trying to strike up an acquaintance with her. And now she was back in London and almost home.
The inn yard was bustling with passersby and travelers coming and going or waiting for their belongings to be unloaded from the coach. But she had only her basket, with the pot of jam, wedge of cheese, and loaf of brown bread supplied by Grantham’s cook, at Jack Ridgeley’s request. It gave her the look of a maid or country woman on an errand and meant she need not linger to wait for a bundle or valise, as others were doing. Would her two trunks of clothing at Hawthorn Cottage ever be sent back to her? It was foolish to worry about such a thing when she had so many more important matters to occupy her mind, but she was very fond of that yellow taffeta, and she really could not spare those clothes.
She glanced around the courtyard, overlooked by its railed galleries, gawking like a raw country girl. No one appeared to be paying attention to anything but his own luggage or duties. It was foolish to fear someone might be watching for her arrival. How could the man or men who had meant to abduct her from Hawthorn Cottage, or the man who had followed her trail to Littlefield know where she had gone? But they had known of Hawthorn Cottage. And if she had been pursued to Littlefield, might the pursuer be able to find out that Ridgeley had taken her to Mr. Grantham’s manor, where he had once worked? If she were not to be found there, the nearest town where a coach stopped might seem her obvious next destination. It would be simple to ask if a young woman had boarded at that stage. And then it would only be a matter of riding to the London inn and waiting for her. It was unlikely, but she could not help but be a little nervous. Mr. Grantham had obviously felt she was in no danger. He might be correct—but gentlemen had been mistaken before on any number of subjects.
She tied her straw hat over her cap and followed an elderly couple when they began plodding toward Fleet Street, hoping it might appear that she was with them. Darkness had fallen, but it was early enough in the evening that people were still going home or out on errands. When the couple turned east, she detached herself, trusting the darkness would deceive anyone watching for her if there were such a person. She turned west, onto Ludgate Street, setting off briskly, glad to be walking rather than still rattling along in the coach. She needed to stretch her legs—and the wild gallop behind Jack Ridgeley had exercised quite unsuspected muscles which had now tightened up. The Oxford Arms, near St. Paul’s, was less than a mile from her uncle’s house.
She crossed the Fleet Ditch, holding her breath at the stench of sewage and rotting debris of all sorts. The bridge marked the end of Ludgate and the beginning of Fleet Street.
No, the distance was not far, except to the mind: some twelve hours ago she had been jouncing along in the wagon with Jack, sure that they had gotten away from Hawthorn Cottage unremarked. How she wished to reach the safety and comfort of Uncle Markham’s house!
At Temple Bar, she passed through one of the small arches meant for those on foot. Where Fleet Street ended, she took the left-hand way to the Strand and then went through St. Clement’s Yard, to avoid Butchers Row and the Back Side of St. Clement’s, both of which had an unsavory reputation. There was a public house at the beginning of Wych Street, but it did not worry her. Its patrons were local folk; indeed, Mr. Eales, the upholsterer, was standing outside the tavern, talking to the old man whose shop sold a bit of everything: used household goods, tallow candles, secondhand hardware, and a little gin.
Eales broke off in the middle of a sentence to say, “You hadn’t ought to be out by yourself, Mistress Jane—at night, too!”
“I know, Mr. Eales. I was delayed.”
He tutted. “Joshua and I will see you to your door. That’s not to say this is a bad neighborhood, but best to be careful.” And the two of them ambled beside her until she reached the kitchen door, and they saw it open. Now she was home.
The kitchen maid stood gaping at her.
<
br /> “Yes, I’ve come at an odd time, dressed like a countrywoman. Let me in, Molly.” Jane pushed into the kitchen. Mrs. Harrow looked up from the chair by the hearth where she was knitting. “Mistress Jane! Why ever…?” The rest of the staff, also in the kitchen, as they often were in the evenings, looked up.
“Mrs. Harrow, will you make tea for us? I’ve been wishing for a cup for hours, and I have something to tell you all.”
On the stagecoach, she had had plenty of time to reflect upon her best course of action. She was glad she had not told Mr. Grantham where she would be staying. She could not quite like him, and he did not appear to take her concern seriously. To be fair, he had not known all the facts, but still, he seemed to know something of Mr. Lattimer. He knew he was out of town, which was troublesome. Although perhaps Mr. Lattimer had gone to do something about the Pleasaunce matter or to find out why Alex had not returned.
Or perhaps he was in town, and Grantham had lied. Her stepmama would say that was a ridiculous idea, for Mr. Grantham was obviously a gentleman and a gentleman would never lie. Which was the commonly accepted view, except that even ladies knew that they did lie, easily and often, though perhaps some preferred not to acknowledge it. That might make married life pleasanter or less humiliating, but as her own situation was more serious than a matter of gaming debts or mistresses, she chose to be a realist.
They sat around the long table where they ate their meals, and Mrs. Jennings poured out cups of bohea, then took the chair left empty by Uncle Markham’s departed valet, ceding her own place to Jane. No Covent Garden audience was ever as quiet.
She took a deep breath and began.
****
“Murdered by Jacobites!” Mrs. Harrow exclaimed. “What has the world come to?”
“Or perhaps only smugglers, though it seems they were hand in glove with Jacobites, certainly.”
“It explains a good deal, Mistress Jane,” the butler said. “We did wonder at Mr. Gordon going away so sudden. And Mr. Stowe as well.”
Most Secret Page 20