The Other Miss Derwent

by Patricia M. Ashley

  He looked astounded. “You mean to come too? But. . . I thought that you disliked London excessively, Mama!”

  “I feel the need for a change. Besides, there are many friends there with whom I will be happy to renew my acquaintance.”

  He eyed her doubtfully.

  Lord Silverfield smiled sardonically. “It seems to me that you might as well all travel there in convoy tomorrow!” He turned his head. “And you, Sir Montagu, do you not wish to taste the delights of the countryside, now you have arrived here?”

  The baronet ignored this sally and addressed himself to Sir James, stiffly: “I will call on you in Town, Derwent, and we will discuss then the situation with regard to my betrothal to your sister!”

  Sir James looked relieved at this intimation that all might not yet be lost. “Yes indeed! I am sure you need not worry about this affair becoming known. We will find her safe and sound tomorrow at Lady Dunford’s, and I will soon bring her to her senses, I assure you!”

  “Yes, that you will!” said his wife grimly. “She is sadly in need of a little discipline!”

  “Well, I must, however reluctantly, take my leave of you,” said Lord Silverfield. “Until we meet again in London? Ah -all of us! You may trust me not to mention Miss Derwent’s escapade to anyone.”

  “And you will come to see us in Town?” enquired Louisa, putting herself forward with immodest eagerness.

  “I am sure we will be meeting constantly!” he replied ambiguously. “I must bid you all good-day!”

  As he left the room the two older ladies of the party resumed hostilities, and Sir James, smiling placatingly, was attempting to smooth down Sir Montagu’s ruffled sensibilities.

  Chapter Ten

  While her relatives were thus expressing great annoyance and disgust at her behaviour, but little concern for her welfare, Anastasia was being rattled along the road to London on top of the coach.

  Once grown more accustomed to the motion which threatened to cast her forth at any moment, and the exhilarating feeling of the air rushing past her face, she found herself rather enjoying the novelty of her bird’s-eye view of countryside unfamiliar to her, and the bustling scenes at their various halts.

  But as the day progressed she grew increasingly chilled and hungry, since expending all her money upon this seat she had none left to refresh herself with at any of the hostelries they stopped at.

  She did venture to climb down and walk about the inn yards, beating her arms in an attempt to gain some warmth, but as the hours passed, and the cold April day darkened, she felt an increasing depression of the spirits.

  The moment was not far off when she would have to leave her perch, and she had ascertained that the spot at which she was to be left was still some eight miles short of London.

  Her earlier high spirits had all fled, and the prospect of such a walk, in the gathering dusk, and among who knows what perils from footpads and other villains, frightened her more than she would allow herself to admit.

  However, she was not so far removed from her childhood as to think herself incapable of a walk of such a distance, and she ventured to think that her male disguise would be some protection to her.

  But it was with a feeling as if her heart had sunk into her boots that she saw the coach move away from her, and heard the last faint echoes of the wheels.

  One or two people in the inn yard began to look at her curiously, so she picked up her bag and began resolutely to walk after the vanished coach.

  She was soon beyond the village, with its fine new villas set in large gardens. The road this close to London was very good, and she was cheered by the frequent number of carriages of all kinds that passed her.

  But as the dusk began to settle this steady stream began to dwindle away, until it was sometimes fifteen or twenty minutes before she was cheered by the sight of another carriage, or a rider.

  But the hour was still quite early, and she hoped by brisk walking to arrive at a not too unseasonable hour.

  Then it occurred to her to wonder what her Aunt would say to her appearance on her doorstep, alone, unheralded, and dressed as a boy! Would she even gain admittance? And then, too, London was a big place and it might be difficult for her to discover her Aunt’s house.

  But such reflections were of no help; she had not the money to return home, and must go on.

  Wearily she changed her valise to her other hand and trudged on. The borrowed boots were inclined to chafe her heels and felt heavy and unwieldy.

  The countryside through which she was passing was a particularly wild stretch of heathland and combined with the greyness of the sky to present a sufficiently depressing prospect to any traveller, let alone one who had devoured Gothic novels with avidity for some years past.

  Her fears of footpads became replaced with fears of some unknown and monstrous THING which might lurk behind any piece of cover beside the road, and she began to look about her nervously as she walked, and to start at any slight noises.

  But the attack, when it came, took her completely by surprise. There was the barest whisper of noise as a figure launched itself through the bushes armed with a stout cudgel, and hit with deadly accuracy at her head.

  Anastasia owed her survival to the fact that, at the very moment of the attack, her sharp ears had caught the faint, approaching noise of a vehicle coming up behind her, and she had half-turned her head.

  The blow still fell with enough force to deprive her of her senses, and with an incoherent cry she fell to the ground.

  Her attacker also now caught the sound of approaching wheels, and snatching up the valise he ran off into the bushes as fast as he could just as a curricle drew round the bend in the road.

  The driver took in the scene at a glance, and snatching up his pistol fired at the fleeing figure. It stumbled, but kept on going, and in another moment was out of range.

  “Winged ‘im, Guvnor!” said his tiger, admiringly.

  The horses showed a tendency to take exception to having a pistol fired above their heads, and the diminutive groom ran to their heads.

  The driver abandoned the reins, and getting down approached the still figure lying by the roadside. It stirred, groaned, and made to turn over.

  He lent his assistance, and the boy gingerly examined the site of the blow with small, elegant hands. The dying sun struck gleams of red among the disordered curls.

  His rescuer bent and picked up the broad-brimmed hat from the dust, and brushing off the worst handed it back with a slight bow.

  “Your hat, Miss Derwent!”

  She looked up with a speed that obviously did her head no good, for she groaned and turned an alarming shade of green.

  “Lord Silverfield!” she gasped. Then her mouth twisted awry: “Oh Lord! – I think I’m going to be sick. .... very sick!”

  With unruffled aplomb he held her slim figure upright while she was rent by spasms, and then handed her his handkerchief and walked back towards the curricle.

  His tiger had been watching the proceedings with lively interest. “Cast up his accounts, Guvner?” he inquired. “I dessay he’ll be the better for it presently! Lucky for him we was about – looks no more than a slip of a lad, too.”

  “Oh, excellently done!” applauded his Lordship, an amused smile twitching his lips, “If I were not certain that you know as much as I about this business, Jem, I would swear to your innocence!”

  “I dunno what you mean, Guvner!”

  “I mean, as you very well know, that you heard me address our friend over there as ‘Miss Derwent’, and with your affinity for tap-room gossip I would not put it past you to know more than I do about this affair!”

  The tiger dropped his innocent face and grinned engagingly. “P’rhaps I do at that! There was some talk of a girl’s being missing at the White Hart, and anyone would put two and two together ‘an make four if they heard what I just heard!”

  “Just so, and now we are going to escort Miss Derwent to her destination. When we have done
so, you will forget that we ever did so, or that you ever heard any gossip about Miss Derwent. Do you take my meaning?”

  “S’help me bob!” he averred. “I’m one as knows how to keep his chaffer shut!”

  “See that you do,” Lord Silverfield advised, striding back to where Anastasia was attempting to rise groggily to her feet.

  Without a word he swept her up and carried her to the curricle.

  Her mind in a dizzy, confused whirl, she made an attempt to struggle, and he said, soothingly:

  “Keep still, Miss Derwent! You have had a nasty blow to the head, and I am going to drive you to your Aunt’s house.”

  She subsided with a feeling of relief, and he swung up beside her and surveyed her woebegone appearance sardonically.

  She was still abnormally pale, though no longer that ominous green shade, and was shaking like a leaf.

  “Here!” he said with rough kindness, pulling a rug about her and tucking it in firmly. “And you had best put on your hat, for your hair looks as if it had been chewed off! Whatever did you do to it?”

  “Cut it with my sewing scissors,” she said weakly, “But I am afraid they are not very sharp. Oh! – where is my valise?” She made as if to rise, and he pressed her back firmly.

  “Your attacker has it, I’m afraid.” He gave his team of greys the office to start, and the tiger swung up into his perch behind.

  She was silent. Then, feeling that some thanks were due, began: “I must .... I must thank you, Sir, for coming to my assistance...” She found it difficult to think of the right words . . . her head ached so, and there seemed to be a strange barrier between them.

  “I could hardly have driven by and left you there,” he pointed out indifferently. “Besides, I was on the look-out for you.”

  “For me?” Surprise made her voice squeak. “How did you know I would be on the road to London? Besides, I thought you would have returned there yesterday!”

  His face darkened angrily. “No, I delayed thinking I had important . . business . . to finish, but it turned out that I was mistaken!”

  She wondered what it could have been, and why he sounded so angry about it, but a sidelong look at his glowering face made her replace the question on her lips with a more innocuous one:

  “You have still not told me how you knew where I would be, for I left no note!”

  “No, but you told your ..... you told Carstares what you were about, and since your delightful niece spied on your meeting with him, all was very soon revealed.”

  “I suppose I should have left a note to say where I was going, but to tell the truth I was in too much of a hurry! Were they very much alarmed? – and how do you know all this?”

  “I called on them this morning on my way back to Town, and I should say they were angry and disgusted, rather than alarmed! The fact that you had gone off to London without, apparently, enough funds to get there, seemed to be dismissed admirably quickly from their minds!”

  “Well, I do not suppose they knew exactly how much money I had,” she said excusingly. “And it was very nearly enough.”

  “Very nearly enough!” he snapped at her, suddenly enraged. “Are you stupid, that you cannot see the dangers to which you laid yourself open by running off alone in this way? It is only by the merest chance that you are not dead, or worse!”

  She flushed vividly. “But I ... I was disguised as a boy, and no one could guess – no one did guess! – that I was not!”

  Since in the voluminous great-coat and hat she did look reasonably boyish he gave her a goaded look and remained silent.

  She assumed a cold dignity. “I don’t think that you have any right to berate me! What I do is none of your concern, though I am naturally grateful for your timely assistance.”

  “Do not be!” he grated, “It was what anyone would do!”

  There was another silence, and then curiosity got the better of her pride. “How did you know that I was dressed as a boy? I did not tell Robin that, for I did not think of it till later. How shocked he must have been by the idea!”

  “A little guesswork. When I went to Derwent Place this morning I met a groom leading one of your brother’s horses. Entrusted to him, I elicited, by a youth about to board the London stage in the early hours of this morning!”

  “Oh. And do my family know all this?” she enquired in a small voice.

  “Yes!”

  After a moment he added unpleasantly: “When I left, Sir James and his wife were planning to follow you to Town tomorrow, in order to try to keep the affair quiet, and your two suitors were engaged in wrangling over which of them should have the honour of marrying you in order to repair your possibly tarnished reputation!”

  “My two suitors?” she exclaimed, ignoring this insult.

  He cast her another of his sardonic glances. “Sir Montagu will probably still marry you, if all can be hushed up. Mr Carstares also offered to marry you, valiantly, I thought, in the face of his Mama’s strenuous opposition! For which,” he added between his teeth, “I do not blame her! However, since you have been compromising yourself by meeting him secretly, he does have a certain obligation to marry you!”

  “It is not valiant of him to offer for me!” she exclaimed angrily. “He loves me!”

  “Calf-love! His Mama had sense enough to realise that, if she allows him to follow you to London, he will soon lose his ill-advised infatuation for you!”

  “Robin to come to London!”

  “And his Mama! Her intentions seem to be to take suitable lodgings for the season.”

  She digested this thoughtfully, and then sighed deeply. “I suppose James will still try to make me accept Sir Montagu. I cannot think straight any more! – I must just put my trust in my Aunt, and hope that she will advise me.”

  “And save you from irate lovers and relatives alike?” he enquired nastily. “A word of advice: if you mean to have young Carstares, you should make sure of him while he still fancies himself in love with you, for if I know anything, he will not long do so.”

  “Mean to have. .... .Oh!” She flushed with anger in the darkness. So he thought that she was on the catch for Robin Carstares, did he? How could she ever have imagined that he was even vaguely attractive before!

  “I thought we might have been friends!” she said hotly, “But now I see that I was sadly mistaken in your character!”

  “And I in yours!” he returned bitterly, and they said no more until they were through the last toll-gate and rattling over the cobbles of London.

  “We are coming into Town now...... it would be as well if you were to hold your coat collar up about your face, and pull your hat well down. It would be fatal if anyone were to see you and later recognise you.”

  She complied in silence, secretly much impressed by the way he handled his team in the noise and bustle of the London streets, though nothing would have induced her to tell him so.

  A new worry occurred to her; what if her Aunt were simply not at home? What then could she do!

  She stole a glance at her companion’s face, illuminated by lamp-light, but it was set in such hard, angry lines that he appeared immeasurably older, and a stranger, so she said nothing.

  But the same thought seemed to have occurred to him too, for one seeing the house they were bound for glowing with lights he looked relieved. “At least someone seems to be at home!”

  “Do you. . .are you acquainted with Lady Dunford?” she enquired.

  “Yes, and with Miss Dunford. Your cousin would be some year or two older than you.”

  “I have never met her, though Lady Dunford has mentioned her in her letters often,” said Anastasia in a hollow voice. “Oh dear! — I wish I had not come.”

  “Too late for that,” he said roughly, but glancing down into her frightened face he relented a little. “Come! They cannot turn you away, you know! And the very worst you can expect is a good scolding and to be sent home in disgrace.”

  “I know – but everything seemed so much simpler
when I was planning it!”

  He left his tiger in charge of the curricle and escorted her up the steps. “I had best see you in, and have a word with. . . .” The door swung open, and a haughty butler looked out at them in pained surprise.

  As he recognised Lord Silverfield his demeanour changed.

  “Good evening, Copes. I have an important message for Lady Dunford. Is she at home?”

  “If you will enter, my Lord, I will enquire.”

  As they went past him he stared rather curiously at his lordship’s companion, of whom nothing much could be seen but the tip of a nose rather pink from the cold, and a white hand clutching the collar of a voluminous greatcoat.

  They were ushered into an apartment in which a fire burned cheerfully, where they awaited the coming of Lady Dunford in silence.

  A few minutes passed, which seemed to Anastasia, by then moving in a hazy dream, to last forever. Then they heard the rapid tap of heels approaching.

  The door opened and a small, plump, bustling woman of middle age trotted in, her dark eyes snapping with curiosity.

  “Lord Silverfield! I had not expected you.....” She stopped dead and recoiled as the figure of a strange youth unfolded itself from a chair and came towards her in a rush.

  “Oh, Aunt Letty!” cried a familiar voice, as the boy attempted to embrace her. “It is me – Anastasia – your niece!” And bursting into overwrought tears she sobbed into her Aunt’s plump shoulder.

  Lady Dunford automatically patted her back and made soothing noises.

  “There, there! Is it really you, Anastasia?”

  Her eyes, puzzled, met Lord Silverfield’s over her niece’s head. “But why. . .how?” Then, eyes widening in horror, she took in the details of her niece’s garb, and she held her away slightly to look at her. “Gracious heavens!”

  Anastasia sniffed, and hung her head.

  “I am sure you must be shocked, Ma’am,” said Lord Silverfield, “But I will only say that I happened to come upon your niece as she was running away to London in search of you, and so took her up in my curricle to deliver her to you the sooner!”