Runaway Bride

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  ‘You are right again. I will seek him out at once; do you be ready to receive him if I can bring him to see reason. Have you nothing more becoming than that shabby green habit? It is hardly the costume to be receiving a wooer in.’

  ‘No, I fear this is the best I can do for him. But after all, he is marrying my fortune, not my clothes. They can be remedied easily enough afterwards. This will do well enough for so unromantic a bargain. But will you not see Lizzy before you go?’

  He gave her a wry smile. ‘No, I thank you. If I am not to thrash her as she deserves, I had best not see her at all. Next time I try my hand at a plot, you shall be my accomplice, Jenny. Tell her from me that if I can settle your affairs to my satisfaction I may be prepared to listen to Edmund’s suit. If not—but time enough for that. Expect to hear from me directly.’ He bowed, and left her at once amused and delighted at the ease of her victory.

  Hearing the front door slam behind him, Elizabeth peered anxiously over the banisters. ‘Jenny, is he truly gone without even seeing me?’

  Mindful of the listening servants, Jennifer ran lightly up to join her. ‘Yes, he said if he saw you he would certainly beat you, so he is gone, instead, to see if he can restore my suitor to me. For it seems the poor man learned of your being run away, Lizzy, and is come back to London in a sad passion.’

  Elizabeth paled with fright. ‘Oh, Jenny, how can you face him? Are you sure you are acting for the best? I cannot bear to think of your throwing yourself away on such a tyrant as I am sure he will prove. You should but see his eyebrows, Jenny, and the way he looks right through one with those piercing eyes of his. I was never more frightened of anyone in my life.’

  ‘Except, I apprehend, your father. But you see, Lizzy, I have destroyed one giant today already: now I am ready for anything. No, seriously, never fret for me. My romantic days are over. Now I am ready to settle down and be a good, dull wife with naughty children and a box at the opera in recompense for a husband. And I am persuaded he and I will rub along well enough together. He will give me much that I have always wanted: a London life and a place in the world. Do you not see me, Lizzy, as a First Minister’s wife, scribbling little notes to this minister and that placeman, famous for my diary and my intimate suppers? I shall do well enough, I promise you. We cannot all find romance like you and Edmund. Oh, by the by, I had quite forgot to tell you that my uncle says if he can settle my affairs—which I am persuaded he will, since he has such a stake in them himself—he will be prepared to listen to Edmund’s suit.’

  Elizabeth’s eyes filled with tears as she embraced her cousin. ‘Oh, Jenny, you are so good to me. I cannot bear to think that you are not going to be as happy as us.’

  ‘I intend to be much happier,’ said Jennifer briskly. ‘I shall have the most elegant equipage, and the newest liveries and the most splendid jewels in town. I shall make bishops and unmake generals (I must, of course, first make my husband First Minister!)...I shall become a patroness of Almack’s and dandies shall tremble at my frown. And now, Lizzy, my love, I would give all my future wealth for half an hour alone. Do you think your good Aunt Foster could be prevailed upon to allow me to stay here? I see that it is getting late, and, to deal plainly with you, I am as much of a runaway as you are. I had hoped it might prove possible to start for home today, but as it is...’ She paused, suddenly exhausted.

  Elizabeth took her hand. ‘Oh, Jenny, how could I be so shatterbrained? Aunt Foster will be most happy to have you stay, I know. She is so grateful to you, Jenny, for facing my father that there is nothing she will not do for you. But come to my room and rest a while, I beg of you, while I seek her out.’

  She insisted on seeing Jennifer laid down upon her bed and after supplying her with her aunt’s spirits of lavender and her own vinaigrette, left her, at last, alone. Jennifer turned her head into the pillow and burst into a passion of tears.

  Gradually recovering her composure, she lay quietly for a while, grateful for the solitude, letting herself, at last, wonder what kind of a man this unknown husband of hers would prove to be. She had often thought it strange that she had neither encountered him in society, nor heard his name mentioned, but had hesitated to make any enquiry about him, for fear of drawing unwelcome attention upon herself. She cared nothing for Elizabeth and Edmund’s opinion of him. Their fright and resentment might, after all, be his best recommendation. Anyway, the die was cast now. If her uncle could prevail upon him to renew his suit, she was determined to have him, were he ten times a bully. As she had told Elizabeth, her days of romance were over. Now it was time to dwindle into a wife.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Mainwaring, meanwhile, had composed a fulminating note to Mandeville, enclosed Jennifer’s in it and sent it round to his lodgings. That done, he resisted a strong temptation to cross-examine his grandmother’s servants in what he knew would be a vain attempt to discover Jennifer’s whereabouts. She was gone of her own free-will, he told his grandmother, and—incidentally—himself. If that was how she wished it, her wish should be respected. He would not attempt to pursue her.

  ‘No, indeed, George. Why should you?’ asked his grandmother blandly.

  This apparently innocent answer so enraged him that he slammed out of the house and took his fury to Brooks’, where the porter confided to a footman that he had not seen his lordship in such a tearer since Boney escaped from Elba. Mainwaring did not stay there long. The news in the papers was insipid, the faces of his friends infuriated him, and he was disappointed in an unadmitted hope that he might encounter Mandeville and have a chance of giving him the thrashing he deserved. Instead, he met young Laverstoke, who had been searching for him to get his approval for his match with Pamela and, incidentally, to babble what seemed to Mainwaring a great deal of nonsense about his extraordinary good fortune and unprecedented happiness. Mainwaring cut him off in the middle of his transports with an abrupt farewell. It had suddenly occurred to him that Lady Laverstoke might just possibly know something of Jennifer’s whereabouts. Of course, he had no personal reason for pursuing her, but he told himself that he owed it to his grandmother to make quite sure that she had, in fact, returned safely to her family.

  Thus convincing himself, he hurried to Bruton Street, only to be told that Lady Laverstoke was driving in the park. He was setting off, on a forlorn hope, to pursue her there, when he heard himself hailed from across the street. The sight of the odious Mr Gurning hurrying towards him did nothing to improve his temper. He would dearly have loved to cut him dead, but his inherent good manners were too much for him, and he waited furiously while Gurning hurried up to him.

  He was out of breath. ‘Thank God, I have caught you at last, sir...Been looking for you all over town...Never was more embarrassed in my life...Owe you the humblest of apologies...Must crave the honour of a few minutes’ private conversation with you.’

  The black brows rose. ‘I can think of nothing in the world, sir, that you and I can have to say to each other. Unless, of course, you are come to discuss the means by which we may least disagreeably release each other from an engagement into which I, for one, heartily wish I had never been fool enough to enter.’

  ‘No, no, sir,’ Gurning had got his breath back. ‘You are quite wide of the mark, I assure you. You must, you positively must, give me an opportunity to explain.’

  ‘Explain, Mr Gurning? I cannot conceive how you propose to explain away the fact that your niece has chosen to run away from home rather than entertain my suit. No, sir, I repeat, we have nothing further to say to each other. Choose your own means of breaking off the match. I owe Miss Purchas that much consideration for her brothers’ sake, but farther than that I will not go.’

  He turned and resumed his impatient progress towards the park, only to find Mr Gurning bobbing along irrepressibly at his elbow.

  ‘My lord, you do not understand. You must let me explain.’

  ‘I understand well enough that I have been made a laughing-stock among you. That is enough for me. Now
I must wish you a very good day. Give my respects to your niece and tell her that she need fear no resumption of the attentions that were so unpleasant to her.’

  ‘But that is the whole point,’ Gurning got it out at last. ‘You have never met my niece.’

  ‘Never met your niece? What madness is this? I have spent two endless hours trying to fix her attention. And now, if you please, sir...’ again he turned away, but Gurning laid a restraining hand on his arm.

  ‘My lord, I am trying to tell you. That was not my niece, but my daughter.’

  Mainwaring swung round to face him. ‘Your daughter?’

  ‘Yes. It is a most painful subject to me, my lord, and, I apprehend, a highly delicate one for us both. Let me beg you to do me the honour of accompanying me to Holborn where I am at present residing, and I will explain the whole.’

  ‘Accompany you to Holborn? Why, in the name of all that’s ridiculous should I do that?’

  ‘My lord, because my niece awaits you there.’

  ‘Ah. So you have a niece. I am relieved to hear it. I was beginning to think you must have made away with her.’

  ‘I? My lord, you are pleased to jest. No, no, it is, I admit, a painful story, but not so bad as that. I have indeed a niece, the most self-willed ungrateful hussy that ever drew breath. I mean,’ he remembered his brief, and hurriedly corrected himself, ‘I intend to say that she is an excessively high spirited young lady and took some notion into her head that—as her brothers’ friend—you should have come to her sooner.’

  ‘Oh, she did, did she?’ But Mainwaring was listening now, and allowed Gurning to walk on beside him. ‘And what is that to the purpose?’

  ‘Why, to be short with you, my lord, she took such an unreasonable prejudice against your lordship that—I am sorry to have to say it to you—rather than meet you she thought fit to leave home.’

  A sharp burst of laughter acknowledged this confession. ‘Ha! Ran away too, did she? You do not seem to be happy in your family, Mr Gurning.’

  ‘My lord, I am the most unfortunate man in the world, so plagued with females...But, to deal plainly with you, my wife has not the sense of a pea-hen and I fear her conduct of the girls has been sadly at fault. Not that I would say a word against Miss Purchas: a high spirited filly, that is all, a trifle heavy-at-hand, but nothing that a husband will not remedy.’

  ‘I am delighted to hear it,’ said Mainwaring dryly. ‘But let me understand you aright. First Miss Purchas ran away from you. Then, for reasons of your own, you substituted your own daughter for her and let me pay my addresses to her (I see now why she was in such a pother, the poor child; it positively does her credit). And now, to complete your confusion, she, too, is run off. It is not an edifying story, Mr Gurning.’

  ‘No, my lord, I blush to recall it.’ He did nothing of the kind. ‘But if you will only be patient, I think all may yet work out for the best. For, I will have you know, I have found them both. Jennifer—I mean Miss Purchas—is but this morning returned to her senses and to my protection. She is a changed girl, my lord. She has got over her childish follies and entirely acknowledges the honour you have done her by proposing for her hand. If you will but forgive and forget and resume your suit, all will yet be well.’

  A great light had dawned on Mainwaring in the course of this speech. ‘Jennifer Purchas,’ he exclaimed, ‘by all that’s holy! But this morning returned, you say, and handsomely prepared to marry me at last. It is mighty good of her, sir. I am not, I collect, to ask where she has been spending her time, or what she has been doing.’

  Mr Gurning had prepared himself for this question. ‘Why, as to that, my lord, I can only tell you that some considerable part of the time has been spent with Lady Laverstoke and her family at Laverstoke House. But no doubt Miss Purchas will be glad to give you the fullest satisfaction on this point herself.’

  Mainwaring walked on for a while in silence. It all fitted together now. Miss Purchas was Miss Fairbank. He had been purblind not to have realised it before. She had taken some miff or other at the manner of his suit (he resolutely refused to let himself remember that his grandmother, too, had thought him dilatory) and as a result had run off like the hoyden she was and contrived to meet him without his having any idea of her true identity. How she must have laughed in her sleeve at him, how triumphed at his deception when he went off to pay his court to her cousin. For, of course, though her uncle would naturally not admit it, she must have been a party to the whole plot.

  Mr Gurning was looking at him anxiously. He made up his mind. ‘It is a strange story, sir, and hardly an elevating one. I collect I am to marry Miss Purchas in haste to protect her from the consequences of her folly. Well, I promised her brother I would look after her, and I am a man of my word. I will do it. But we’ll have no more hole-and-corner work, no more pigs in pokes. Take me to her directly.’

  Mr Gurning was only too happy to comply, though he shot many an anxious glance at his saturnine companion as they made their way to Holborn. His respect for Jennifer was by now considerable. She had worsted him, but would she be a match for this furious nobleman?

  Jennifer was listening patiently to Elizabeth’s plans for her wedding when a maid told her that Mr Gurning and another gentleman were awaiting her company in the small downstairs drawing-room.

  Elizabeth clasped her hands: ‘Oh, Jenny, they are come. Do you really dare face him?’

  It was what Jennifer was rather wondering herself, but she put a good face on the matter: ‘Of course I do,’ she said briskly, ‘it will be over soon enough, and he cannot eat me. After all it was not I that tricked him.’

  ‘I wish he may be aware of that,’ said Lizzy presciently. ‘And, Jenny, you did run away from him.’

  ‘Too late to worry about that now. Is my hair tidy, Lizzy?’

  ‘Yes, you look very becomingly, my love, though I could wish...’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ interrupted Jennifer impatiently, ‘you wish I had a different gown. Well, to deal plainly with you, so do I. One does not feel at one’s bravest looking a dowd.’ But in her heart she consoled herself with the knowledge that the dark green became her. As for its shabbiness, she was, oddly, quite pleased about that. She would not flaunt the fortune for which this unknown suitor was prepared to marry her. It seemed, as she slowly descended the stairs, a mad venture. But what else could she do? She summoned up her courage and entered the drawing-room. Her Uncle Gurning was standing facing the door, talking, it seemed with some embarrassment, to a tall man whose back was towards her. But that back—could she be mistaken? He turned. Mainwaring.

  She very nearly turned herself, and fled, as it all fell into place in her mind. How could she not have guessed? His brother’s death, of course, accounted for the change of name that had misled her. It had been he, all the time, from whom she had fled, and to him that she had turned to save her from disgrace. It was impossible, intolerable. But there was no time to think. He was coming towards her, she saw the colour in his cheek, the little flame in his eye, and knew that he was in one of his cold rages.

  ‘Miss Purchas,’ Mainwaring bowed over her hand, ‘this is a pleasure to which I have long looked forward.’ His eyes gave her a more savage message. For the first time, she was frightened.

  But her uncle was elaborately taking his leave of them. They would have much to discuss, he hinted. He was happy to see them so well in agreement at last...With this final unfortunate phrase he got himself out of the room.

  Mainwaring looked down at her. ‘Well, Miss Fairbank,’ he said, ‘or rather, I beg your pardon, Miss Purchas. How do we play this scene of your comedy? Or have you finished your game with me at last?’

  ‘My game? I do not understand you, sir.’

  ‘Why, this pretty game of hide-and-seek by which you have made a laughing-stock of me. How you and your cousin must have laughed, comparing notes over my follies. To “rescue” you one day and go a-wooing of her the next. Good God, I can hardly forebear laughing myself to think wh
at a figure of fun I have proved.’ He looked very far from laughter.

  Jennifer was appalled. This was worse than anything she had imagined. ‘But, my lord, it was not like that at all! There was no plan, no stratagem of the kind you hint at. If I had but known—but believe me I did not...You must have seen, when I came into the room, that I was as astonished as yourself.’

  He looked at her grimly. ‘On the contrary, Miss Purchas, I saw you as little astonished as myself. I had already collected all too much of the truth from your uncle’s speeches. And you, I apprehend, are far too accomplished an actress to let a little thing like “surprise” defeat you. Do but consider the performances I have been favoured with: the errant heroine, the faithful friend, innocence affronted...And I, all the time, the deluded fool. Pah! It makes me sick to think of it.’

  She was white now, holding on to the back of a chair for support. ‘My lord, you must let me explain. I did, I confess, take your first proposal amiss...’

  He interrupted her. ‘My dear ma’am, that is ancient history. We have no time to lose over it now. It seems you are come at last to a stand. Your play-acting is over; your fingers are burned; you find your good name endangered and turn to me for the protection of mine. Well; you shall have it, as I have already told your uncle. I promised your brothers I would look after you, and by God, I will. We marry tomorrow, by special licence. We must, I think, to make the thing complete, set up house together, however much it may go against the grain. I suggest that we dispense with the mockery of a honeymoon and proceed at once to Shaws, my house in Derbyshire, which will, I trust, be large enough to hold us both without too great inconvenience to either. As soon as I may do so without arousing gossip, I will rejoin the army and you shall be rid of me.’

  She was crying now, she was not sure whether from anger or despair. But she must be angry, only so could she save any shred of self-respect. She lifted her white face to his. ‘My lord, that is enough. When you recollect yourself—and understand the matter more clearly—you will be sorry to have insulted me so. For the present, there is nothing for me to do but to thank you for your generous offer, however worded, and to decline it. My brothers loved me too well to wish me married to a man who loathes me. You are absolved from your promise to them. As for my name: let the world chatter. I am beyond caring for reputation. Good-bye, my lord. I am sorry you should think I ever mocked you.’ The last words were forced out with difficulty over the rising tide of tears. She turned and quickly left the room.