The Other Miss Derwent

by Patricia M. Ashley

  Lord Silverfield ..... he made her feel confused without knowing quite why, just by once looking at her! But when she thought of his marrying Louisa her fingers curled unconsciously into little claws.

  She chided herself for a fool. This was only the second time they had met, and the first time she had seen him -though he had been just as handsome and romantic-looking as she had expected from his voice! – and it was stupid of her to think that she could not bear it if he married Louisa!

  Even if he was younger and infinitely more interesting than Sir Montagu.

  “Lucky, lucky, Louisa!” she sighed, and drearily betook herself to the pianoforte to play the most dismal tunes she could think of.

  * * * *

  Rather later in the day she had the idea of sending for her old friend Robin Carstares. She had not seen him for over a week, upon which occasion he had earned her displeasure by attempting to embrace her.

  They had since earliest childhood played, ridden, hunted, quarrelled, and made mischief together, and she regarded him in the light of a brother. More so, in fact, than her half-brother James, since he was near to her own age and James old enough to be her father.

  It had come as both a surprise and a shock to her when his feelings had recently undergone a metamorphosis into what could only be described as an acute attack of calf-love.

  But still, he was her only friend, and would not fail her now that she needed him, she was sure. So she penned a careful note to him, arranging to meet him in the shrubbery that night ‘upon a matter of the greatest urgency.’

  Her Father had encouraged her to be the boy he had wanted, and had allowed her to run wild where she pleased, but even he would not have condoned her frequent absences from the house at night had he known of them.

  Luckily for her, neither he nor James had ever found out about her escapades, and Anastasia still came and went as she pleased as though she were still a heedless tomboy.

  One of the maids was her willing accomplice in the sending of notes, considering her young mistress ‘romantic,’ and besides that, being herself in love with one of the grooms at the Grange, where Robin Carstares lived with his doting and formidable widowed mother.

  The assignation made, she settled down to pass the remainder of the day in contemplation of the awfulness of her position, and in comparing it with the plight of various heroines in the Gothic novels she so avidly read.

  By degrees she passed into a pleasant daydream in which a dark and handsome stranger whisked her away in the teeth of her family’s opposition. He bore not a little resemblance to Lord Silverfield.

  Her family were surprised but gratified to find her so quiet and docile, thinking that it boded well for the morrow.

  Louisa, who was occasionally more persistent in spying on her than Anastasia liked, was fortunately already packing for London, and had no time to spare for her.

  By the time the house had settled, dark and silent, into its nightly repose she had evolved the outlines of a plan, spurred on by an increasing desire to leave the premises before the advent of her unwanted suitor.

  Chapter Four

  It might be supposed that Lord Silverfield, having made his escape from the Derwents’ clutches, would have immediately summoned his curricle and departed hot-foot for London.

  This was indeed his first reaction upon reaching the comfortable Posting Inn where he was putting up. But being a large and healthy young man with an appetite to match, he first demanded sustenance. The Inn-keeper, after one glance at his furrowed and angry face, had sent his minions scurrying to produce a repast worthy of the noble Lord.

  Over this he began to relax a little, helped by some excellent ale, and, stretching out his long legs in their glossy topboots to the cheerful fire, he began to think seriously of his position.

  He still felt badly rattled by Sir James’s obvious expectations and Louisa’s odious complacency; but he prided himself on his escape, however temporary. Perhaps it would also serve as a lesson to them not to show their hand too plainly when they met again in London!

  And that damned Uncle of his. . . .He wouldn’t put it past him to have plotted the whole scheme out with Sir James beforehand! — except, of course, that if Sir James had known about it he would not have tried to marry his daughter off to Sir Montagu, which he seemed to have been perfectly ready to do.

  “Damn them!” he said aloud. He remembered Louisa’s simpering complaisance and added, scowling even more blackly: “And damn all women!”

  The Landlord started nervously. “My Lord?”

  “Nothing. Leave me,” he ordered curtly.

  The landlord placed an excellent cheese before him and left the room with a hurried step.

  Lord Silverfield moodily swirled the contents of his tankard about.

  Yes, damn all women — except possibly one — He found that Anastasia’s face kept sliding into his mind when he least expected it. Those clear, greenish eyes with their hint of an upward slant......

  Annoyed with himself he banished the vision firmly, and drained his tankard, setting it down with a crash that rattled the crockery.

  He was in trouble enough without complicating the matter further by becoming enamoured of a girl not yet out.... But still, he would have liked to see her again before he returned to London!

  Perhaps, if he did, this strange feeling of attraction would cease? After all, she was a far remove from the sophisticated beauties and high-fliers who had been the previous objects of his transient affections.

  As for her cousin – no, niece! How absurd! – Louisa Derwent, he had almost a twelve-month to decide about that. Time enough to think of something, or perhaps, though it seemed unlikely, in a year he would not mind so much.

  His spirits, ever mercurial, began to rise, and he cheerfully banished the question of marriage to the back of his mind; and, without consciously making the decision, the resolution was formed that he would ride out to Derwent Place that night in the hope of finding Anastasia once more upon her nocturnal ramblings.

  * * * *

  If the Landlord thought that a request for a horse to be brought round so late at night was unusual, he had yet gauged the temper of his guest well enough to ask no questions.

  Besides which, he was then occupied with the arrival of a post-chaise and four, with all the bustle consequent upon it, and Lord Silverfield was soon riding off into the quiet countryside upon a hired nag recalcitrant at being taken from a warm stall.

  He enjoyed the short journey after his hours of inaction, and began to whistle under his breath. He would speak to the girl again tonight if he had to throw gravel at every window in the house!

  And then he would see how he had deluded himself into thinking she was any different from the other silly, chattering fools he had had thrown at his head by matchmaking Mamas with an eye on his title, season after season.

  One giggle, one flirtatious giggle, would be enough to free him from this unaccountable fascination, and send him winging his way to the flesh-pots of London tomorrow morning with a light and unfettered heart.

  He tied his horse up a good way from the house, and well off the road, in a thicket, and then made his way towards the house. All lay quiet and dark about him: not even a breeze stirred the branches of the trees.

  Moving quietly, he emerged on the far side of the thicket. Suddenly there was a gleam of eyes in the darkness, and something large, and blacker than the night, bared teeth like tombstones and struck out at him.

  He gave a yell and sprang back, his heart racing wildly, only to laugh at himself a moment later as the apparition snorted gustily and revealed itself as a black horse, equally startled by his own sudden appearance.

  He calmed the animal and wondered what the creature, saddled and bridled as he discovered, was doing there; concealed there, in fact, like his own horse.

  He turned quickly and strode towards the house, a suspicion forming in his mind. As he approached the wilderness his attention was caught by a soft murmuring,
rising and falling, from somewhere to his right which, as he drew nearer, resolved itself into two people whispering together in the darkness.

  A black anger filled his heart, and he knew what he would find before he turned into the pathway and saw them there in the moonlight.

  A tall, blonde young man was holding Anastasia in his arms, and as Lord Silverfield watched, bent his head and kissed her.

  He gave a low curse and abruptly turned and walked back the way he had come, unheeding of the noise his progress made.

  Until that moment he had not known how much he had been hoping that it would be Louisa keeping this lover’s tryst: until that moment he had never known a feeling of such jealousy.

  Chapter Five

  Had he waited a moment longer he would have seen Anastasia wrench herself angrily out of the inexpert but enthusiastic grip of the blonde young man.

  “Robin! I did not send for you for this! – you know I do not like you to behave so.”

  He looked at her in a baffled sort of way. “I’m sorry, Ana! Look, do not go in – I promise not to do it again!”

  She looked at him dubiously, half poised for flight. Then she relented. “Well keep your promise, then, or I will go in!”

  He pushed his hands deep into his breeches pockets and clenched them. It was a mystery to him how the wild, reckless playfellow of his youth could have become transformed into a desirable young woman so suddenly, but so it was.

  He could see that she did not at all feel the same way about him, for on the only two occasions on which he had attempted to embrace her he had met with such forthright and indignant rebuffs that they might, had he not been so far gone in calf-love, have wounded his vanity considerably.

  He looked at her broodingly. “You know, now I come to think of it, you ought not to be wandering about alone at night!”

  She turned an astonished face to him. “But I have always done so, and you have never said so before! Besides, I know that I ought not to do it, but I do not see why I should not. Do not be nonsensical!”

  “I am not being nonsensical! It was all very well when we were children, but now that you are a young lady it is not the thing at all, and I ought not to encourage you!”

  “Oh Robin! I do not know what has changed you, but lately you begin to sound more and more like James!”

  “Lord, if he knew only half the things you get up to, his hair would turn white overnight!” he said with an unwilling laugh.

  “How could it? He hasn’t got any!” she said merrily. “Come, that is better!”

  He was unable to stop himself from laughing, since Sir James’ total baldness and the pains he took to conceal it was a standing joke between them.

  Smiling, she tucked her hand into his arm and strolled slowly along the path with him. “In any case, I am quite grown-up now, and hardly ever do anything he could disapprove of.”

  “If he could see you now, not only your reputation would be vanished for ever, but he would probably turn you out of the house as well! Lord! — what a peal would be rung over you!”

  “Well he can’t see me, and will never know, for I do not suppose that you mean to tell him.”

  “Anastasia!”

  “I was just teasing. Come, let me tell you why I asked you to meet me, for I need your advice badly.”

  “You know I would do anything for you. Ana!”

  She sighed ruefully. This new Robin was so much more tedious than her old playfellow. Love, if love this was, seemed to have addled his brains. Besides, whenever he looked at her his face acquired an almost sheep-like expression.

  “It is about Sir Montagu Morley that I wish to speak to you. At least, not about him, exactly, but what I must do...” She saw that this had wiped out the sheep-like expression, and continued:

  “You recollect that I told you that he wished to marry me instead of Louisa, because he so unfortunately met me when he came down to stay last year and took a fancy to me? Well, James has invited him to stay, and he is arriving tomorrow. What is more, James has given him permission to pay his addresses to me alone!”

  “The devil he has! I would not trust any sister of mine alone with him — he has a devilish bad reputation!”

  “You have not got a sister,” she pointed out reasonably. “And how do you know anything about his reputation? You do not go anywhere where you might meet him!”

  “I do not have to meet him to learn of his reputation, you goose! He is hardly likely to introduce his little . . . amusements into the conversation! No, my Uncle was speaking of him when I was there last for the hunting. I do not know what Sir James thinks he is about!”

  “Oh, as to that, Sir Montagu has just recently inherited an estate and a comfortable fortune! It is easy enough to explain. No doubt he wishes to marry to produce an heir, since he has not before seemed to be interested in marriage!”

  “Anastasia! You should not know of such things – or at any rate, speak of them!”

  “Oh? Why not? — when they are what I am thinking, and what everyone else is thinking, come to that! It is unfortunate that Sir Montagu should have come here before he proposed to Louisa last year, and decided that I would do better. Louisa was as wild as fire!”

  “Sir James should be ashamed of himself, trying to force an innocent young girl into marriage with such an old roué as Sir Montagu! Why, he must be forty years old at the least!” This struck him as being a very great age.

  “Louisa would have quite liked to marry him – it is very strange!” she mused. “But once they had heard the conditions of that will they were excessively glad that she had not become betrothed to him, or she would have missed her chance to become my Lady Silverfield!”

  “Oho, so that tale was true, was it? He is to offer for her?”

  “It is true enough that he has been left a fortune on the condition that he does so, but I do not know if he will consider the price worth paying!”

  “Since I heard that he had called on you today, we must presume that he does! It is all over the village already – I do not know how these things get about!”

  “Oh, that is easily explained – my sister-in-law tells everything to her maid, and her maid tells the world – all in the strictest confidence!”

  “Did you meet Silverfield? What is he like?”

  Rightly conjecturing that to tell him that she had first met his Lordship under the same circumstances as the present, or to impart the information that he was very handsome, would meet with nothing but jealousy, she answered cautiously:

  “I did meet him. He is very tall and dark, and his manners are very abrupt! He is not at all dandified – rather the opposite, for Maria was complaining at his paying a morning visit in riding dress! I don’t think that he was very taken with Louisa, either, for he could not even remember her, and she says that he has several times stood up to dance with her in London!”

  “He surely did not say that he did not remember her!”

  “Oh! It .... it was quite obvious! And he made the most lame of excuses to leave as soon as he could, and positively ran out of the room. I do not think, myself, that he will be back!”

  “So what do they mean to do?”

  “They mean to take Louisa up to Town and throw her at his head at every opportunity, I think. James considers that he means to accept the inevitable and marry her in the end, but since he has the better part of a twelve-month before he must he means to leave it until the last minute before he offers for her!”

  A thought struck him. “Do they mean to take you with them to London?”

  “Not unless I accept Sir Montagu’s offer first,” she answered gloomily.

  “And are you going to accept him?” he enquired, his heart thumping painfully. He strained his eyes to pick out her face in the dim light. Little green-eyed cat, he had been used to call her, and tease her about the redness of her hair!

  “No, of course not! But it will be very difficult. . . Oh Robin, I don’t wish to be alone with him, even if James and Ma
ria do mean to be in the next room while he offers for me!”

  “If you dread it so much, surely you can refuse the meeting?”

  “I could – but you do not know Sir Montagu! He would find some way of seeing me alone no matter how hard I tried to avoid him, and perhaps there might then be no-one within earshot.” She shuddered.

  “If he insults you I will call him out!” he cried hotly.

  “Do not be so silly! Much good will it do me to have my one friend with a hole blown through him!”

  “Ana! I am not so poor a shot that I might not hope to hit him first!”

  “Well, we will not argue about it,” she said pacifically, since he was a lamentable shot. “The whole point is that I must get away from here before Sir Montague arrives, and then I will not have to meet him at all! And you must help me!”

  He stood stock still for one moment and then attempted to embrace her. “You mean. .... you m-mean you will marry me?” he stuttered.

  She pushed him firmly away with both hands against his chest. “No, I do not! Besides which, your Mama would never let you marry me, even if I wanted to!”

  “We could elope. Come, you cannot pretend that you do not like me a deal better than Sir Montagu!”

  “Of course I like you better – indeed, I love you like a brother! And that is precisely why I do not wish to marry you!”

  “You might change. People do change, you know. Look at me.”

  “Yes, I know. Perhaps I may change eventually, how am I to tell? But for now, I could not marry you.”

  He sighed, but seemed to accept this. “I suppose it would have been difficult in any case, since we are both minors. Though an elopement would have been a terrific lark!”

  She reflected, with all the wisdom of her seventeen years, that he was not far from the schoolboy upon occasions.

  “Anyway, I have thought and thought what to do, and I have decided that there is only one thing for it; I mean to go to my Aunt, Lady Dunford, and beg her to help me.”