by M C Beaton
‘But you can never hope for anything else,’ sneered that awful voice again. ‘I do believe you are getting quite spoony about him, Hannah Pym, and he knew you as a servant.’
Hannah opened her eyes and looked out of the window to banish her thoughts. A watery sunlight was struggling through the clouds. There were wild daffodils blowing by the roadside, dipping and swaying in the blustery wind. Soon the leaves would be back on the trees and there would be summer to look forward to.
The journey continued on in blessed silence, blessed for Hannah, who did not think she could bear any more insults.
But when they arrived in Cuckfield and entered the White Hart, somehow the splendour and elegance of the famous inn brought out the worst in Mrs Hick.
She saw Hannah looking with interest at a tall man who was lounging at his ease in the corner. Hannah was wondering who he was. In an age when most people were not much taller than five feet, he seemed a giant. He had lazy blue, amiable eyes and golden hair, tied back at the nape of his neck with a blue silk ribbon. He had a strong, handsome face, lightly tanned, broad shoulders, and the finest pair of legs Hannah had ever seen. He was wearing a beautifully cut coat of fine blue wool with gold buttons, worn open over a silk waistcoat embroidered with peacocks. His legs were encased in skin-tight leather breeches and Hessian boots with jaunty little gold tassels.
Tiny Mrs Hick screwed round in her chair and her saucer-like eyes fastened on the focus of Hannah’s attention.
‘Miss ’Igh and Mighty ’ere is casting her glims at that prime bit o’ Fancy,’ jeered Mrs Hick. ‘Next, she’ll be over there, chattering about ’er footman.’
The waiter, a lofty individual with a sallow face, snickered as he placed another plate of cakes on the table.
‘We see ’em all, ma’am,’ he said to Mrs Hick. ‘You’ve no idea the number o’ ladies who come in on the coach pretending to be Quality.’
Hannah half-rose from her seat, her face scarlet. But a voice from behind her chair made her sink back down in amazement.
‘Shut yer bleeding cake-’ole,’ said a Cockney voice, ‘or I’ll draw yer cork, you litre turd ov a jackanapes.’
Hannah twisted round and stared open-mouthed at Benjamin. She was as amazed as if the teapot itself had burst into speech.
‘You’ll draw my cork,’ sneered the waiter. ‘I’d like to see you try.’
‘Outside,’ roared Benjamin.
‘The dumb fellow can speak arter all,’ cried Mrs Hick.
Benjamin and the waiter marched outside to the inn yard. ‘A mill!’ cried the soldier, and the whole inn followed them outside, even the aristocratic-looking gentleman, even Hannah, almost as dumb with amazement as Benjamin had pretended to be.
Benjamin carefully removed his coat and placed it on a mounting-block. Bets were rapidly being laid, the betters favouring the waiter. Benjamin then removed his clean shirt and placed that tenderly on top of his coat. Stripped, he revealed a well-muscled chest and strong arms. Some of the bets changed in favour of Benjamin.
Hannah made a move to stop her footman but found her arm taken in a gentle but powerful grasp. She found the aristocrat beside her. ‘Don’t ruin a fight, ma’am,’ he said plaintively. ‘I should not really worry about your footman. My money is on him.’
‘I didn’t know he could talk,’ said Hannah. ‘All this time and he has pretended to be deaf and dumb.’
The waiter and Benjamin squared up. The coachman, who had elected himself as referee, dropped the handkerchief and the pair set to.
Benjamin dodged and feinted, moving like lightning, prancing about on his new leather pumps, which he kept polished like glass.
Then Benjamin’s fist seemed to come up from the ground and it smacked the waiter full on the chin with an enormous thwack. There was a silence as the waiter staggered this way and that and then stretched his length on the ground.
In an age when a good fight was expected to last eighteen rounds at least, this was considered a poor sort of match.
Hannah marched up to Benjamin as he carefully donned his shirt.
‘What is the meaning of this, Benjamin?’ she cried. ‘Why did you pretend you couldn’t speak?’
Benjamin smoothed down the ruffles of his shirt with a fastidious hand and then put on his plush coat. ‘I couldn’t tell you, modom,’ he said in strangulated accents very different from his Cockney outburst in the inn. ‘You was that sorry for me. I pretended to be deaf and dumb, ’cos I knew Lady Carsey liked freaks and I needed work. That’s how I got started as a footman.’
‘But when Lady Carsey falsely accused you of taking her brooch, why did you not speak then?’
‘I daren’t, modom, for the magistrate might have thought that since I was lying about one thing, therefore I might be lying about being innocent of the theft. Not that it did me much good.’
‘But you had no reason to lie to me!’
‘Thought you might not be sorry for me no more and turn me off,’ mumbled Benjamin.
Hannah, aware of the listeners, said, ‘We shall talk of this further when we get to Brighton.’
Lord Alistair Munro watched with amusement as Hannah took her seat with Benjamin standing punctiliously behind her chair.
Mrs Hick had bet on the waiter and was not feeling charitable. ‘Fancy not knowing her own footman can speak. That is, if he is a footman.’
‘Stow it, you ’orrid old crow,’ said Benjamin suddenly. ‘I’m a proper footman, I am, not that I expects a piece of kennel garbage like yerself to recognize one, not even if you met one in yer soup!’
This was said with such blistering venom that not only Mrs Hick but the whole stage-coach party fell into a deep silence, each one frightened to catch Benjamin’s angry eye.
No, thought Hannah, Benjamin had never been a footman before that episode where he had worked for Lady Carsey in Esher, Lady Carsey who had tried to get him hanged for a theft he had not committed, Lady Carsey who liked freaks and wanted Benjamin in her bed. Footmen were indolent creatures and vain. Most would have enjoyed their mistress’s discomfiture.
A new waiter bent over Hannah and whispered, ‘The gentleman over there, Lord Alistair Munro, wishes the honour of entertaining you.’
Although she was still bewildered and upset by Benjamin, Hannah was glad to escape from the stage-coach passengers.
She rose and went over to Lord Alistair’s table. He got up as she approached and drew out a seat for her. Benjamin, with a last threatening look at the cowed passengers, went to stand behind her chair.
‘I hope what I have to say will not offend you,’ said Lord Alistair. ‘I have taken a great liking to your footman. I am sorely tempted to steal him away from you.’
‘Wouldn’t go,’ snapped Benjamin from behind Hannah. ‘Not foralla tea ’n China. No.’
‘Benjamin,’ said Hannah impatiently, ‘I am touched by your loyalty, but you must not address Lord Alistair in such a manner.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Lord Alistair amiably. ‘You were very surprised when he spoke.’
Hannah told him the tale of Benjamin’s adventures and that led to tales of her other adventures. Lord Alistair appeared fascinated.
‘You are a lucky man,’ he said to Benjamin at last. ‘Many employers would be furious to find that they had been writing reams of instructions to you when all the time you understood every word.’
Benjamin gave a little cough. ‘The passengers have left, modom.’
‘I did not even notice,’ said Hannah, starting up. ‘Run and tell them I am just coming.’
Lord Alistair held out his card. ‘I am bound for Brighton as well. If I can be of service to you, Mrs …?’
‘Pym. Miss Pym.’
‘Miss Pym. Do not hesitate to call on me.’
Hannah took his card and then hurried out, remembering only when she reached the inn door that she was now the proud possessor of cards of her own, and did not even know yet how Benjamin had come by them.
Benj
amin came striding towards her, his face dark with anger. ‘The bastards ’as gone,’ he shouted.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Hannah frostily.
‘Sorry, modom, but them passengers must ’ave … have … told the coachman you was on board and off they’ve gone, baggage and all.’
Lord Alistair emerged from the inn in time to hear this.
‘Well, you are fortunate, Miss Pym,’ he said. ‘I am just leaving myself and I can take you up. In fact, I can take you all the way to Brighton.’
‘Please, my lord,’ said Hannah, ‘if you could just catch up with the coach so that I may tell them all what I think of them.’
‘Gladly.’
Benjamin’s eyes lit up as an ostler led a smart curricle up to the front of the inn. The curricle had only recently become fashionable. It was a two-wheeled carriage with a hood and the only two-wheeled carriage which used two horses abreast. It had been damned as ungraceful; the hinder curve of the sword case had been called positively ugly and the crooked front line and the dashing iron in the worst possible taste. But it was the fastest vehicle on the road, being the lightest.
Lord Alistair’s was drawn by two matched bays. He helped Hannah in and then climbed in on the other side and took the reins in his hands. Benjamin jumped on the back just as Lord Alistair called to the ostler, ‘Stand away.’
To Benjamin’s disappointment, the carriage moved off at a leisurely pace.
‘I fear, Miss Pym,’ said Lord Alistair, ‘that being abandoned by the stage-coach is hardly an exciting adventure, merely a tiresome happening.’
‘But I have had an adventure,’ said Hannah, ‘or rather, something terrible has happened.’
‘And what was that?’
‘Lady Beatrice Marsham was one of the passengers.’ Hannah, so eager to share her worries, did not notice a certain rigidity in Lord Alistair’s handsome features. ‘We stopped at Croydon and we were just about to leave when this ugly-looking individual came up to Lady Beatrice and constrained – I am sure he was holding either a pistol or a knife at her side – constrained her to board his carriage. I cried for help and the coachman and others came running. But when appealed to, Lady Beatrice said she was leaving of her own free will.’
‘Did she use those words?’ asked Lord Alistair.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll admit that’s odd. It would be more in character for a cold fish like Lady Beatrice Marsham to say, ‘‘Damn your impertinence’’ if all was well.’
‘Do you know her?’ asked Hannah eagerly.
‘I have had that pleasure.’ His voice was dry.
‘You do not seem to approve of the lady.’
‘No, I do not. She plays fast and loose with men’s affections, and that was when she was married. Harry Blackstone, her husband that was, died drunk about a year ago. He was gambler, rake and swine in general, but that does not give the lady any excuse to flirt shamelessly until the fellows fall in love with her and then turn them down flat.’
‘Were you … were you one of those fellows, my lord?’
‘No, Miss Pym. I do not pursue married ladies. Change the subject. Lady Beatrice is well able to protect herself. What do you plan to do in Brighton?’
‘Look at the sea,’ said Hannah with a laugh. ‘Walk a great deal. Perhaps I might even see the prince.’
‘Bound to see Prinny,’ said Lord Alistair. ‘Southern’s giving a ball next week. Prinny’s bound to be there, so you’ll see him.’
What an odd day, thought Hannah. First she was humiliated because she thought Lady Beatrice had considered her too low to speak to, and now she was humiliated because Lord Alistair thought her grand enough to be invited to a ball by the Earl of Southern and she would have to explain she was not. ‘I am not of the ton,’ said Hannah in a stifled voice. ‘In fact, I do not really belong anywhere.’ In a near whisper, she told him all about her years of service with the Clarences.
He smiled at her. ‘Miss Pym, you are a citizen of the world and can go anywhere you like. Tell you what, I’ll take you there myself – that is, if you promise to tell me more stories.’
Tears glistened in Hannah’s eyes. ‘I, my lord? Do you mean that you would take me?’
‘Yes, Miss Pym. But you’d best tell me where you are staying so that I can call on you.’
‘I had not thought,’ said Hannah. ‘I shall let you know, my lord.’
‘Don’t know if we’ll catch any coach at this rate.’ Benjamin’s voice sounded from behind them.
‘Really, Benjamin,’ snapped Hannah, wondering if this new Benjamin complete with voice was going to be a problem.
But Lord Alistair smiled lazily and said, ‘He has the right of it. Hold tightly. I’m going to spring ’em.’
The horses surged forward and soon Hannah was hanging on for dear life as the now sunny countryside became a moving blur. Behind her, Benjamin, exalted by the speed, began to sing loudly and noisily.
At the bottom of a long hill, they at last saw the coach. On and on they sped. Hannah screamed loudly as they swept past the coach with an inch to spare. Lord Alistair drove his team up the next hill and then swung his carriage around to block the road at the top.
‘You was in the coach,’ cried the coachman, leaning down from his high perch, his eyes starting from his head as he brought his heavily laden coach to a halt.
‘As you can see, I am not,’ said Hannah. She climbed down on wobbly legs. ‘I am going to continue my journey and I expect a refund on my fare, too. Climb aboard, Benjamin.’ But Benjamin had hauled open the door of the coach and had started to berate the passengers.
Hannah pulled him aside and told him to climb on to the roof and then got in to hear the lying protests of the now thoroughly frightened passengers, each protesting that it hadn’t been his or her fault. Actually, it had seemed a prime joke to leave Hannah behind when Mrs Hick had suggested it, but now all were scared that Hannah might turn that terrible footman of hers loose on them.
Ignoring them all, Hannah sank back in her seat, only grateful to be secure in the stage-coach once more and resolving never to set foot in another curricle. She hoped the velocity had not damaged her brain.
At last, as night fell, they rolled into Brighton. Hannah was glad, when she booked two rooms at the Ship, that she had managed to force the coaching office to refund some of her fare. The rooms at the Ship were terribly expensive.
Benjamin presented himself in her room.
‘Now, Benjamin,’ said Hannah sternly, ‘out with it. Tell me your story. You may sit down.’
Benjamin sat down on a hard chair opposite and regarded her thoughtfully. ‘All of it, modom?’ he asked in the stultifying accent he obviously considered genteel.
‘Yes, all of it,’ said Hannah. ‘Start with your parents.’
‘I never knew them,’ said Benjamin. He told a story of being brought up by a Mrs Coombes in the East End of London in a broken-down house by the river. He could never find out who his parents had been or why Mrs Coombes had taken him in. She drank a lot, he said, and often beat him. He had been apprenticed to a sweep who had got rid of him after only six months because he was growing too big to get up the chimneys. Then he had found work as a stable-lad at a livery stable in the West End. He said he had envied the footmen he saw going about their employers’ errands. They seemed to have little to do but dress nicely and look tall. He found he was lucky at gambling and he soon became more interested in that than work. He did not turn up at the livery stable one morning, because he had been up most of the night gambling and had slept in. He lost that job. He felt the loss of it keenly, too, for a clerk who kept the livery stable’s books had taught him to read and write. He decided to give up gambling and try to get into service as a footman. But he did not have any references and no one wanted him and he was too tall for a page. He worked as knife-boy in one establishment and then as odd man in another. Then Mrs Coombes, the only sort of family he had ever known, had died. Benjamin had decided to leave
London and try to find work as a footman in a country household where they might prove to be less particular than city houses. At Esher, he had learned of Lady Carsey from some men he had gambled with. One of them worked for Lady Carsey as a groom and hinted that she had odd tastes and had once made a pet of a housemaid who had a hunched back. Benjamin hit on the idea of appearing to be deaf and dumb, and for a while it had worked, until Lady Carsey had decided to try to relieve the tedium of her country days by taking the footman into her bed. ‘And so you know the rest,’ he ended. ‘I refused, and she tried to get her revenge.’
Hannah thought uneasily that Benjamin’s story was too simple, and yet it could be true. She assured him that she had no intention of turning him off, but added that the inn was too expensive and that they would need to find cheaper lodgings.
‘An apartment,’ said Benjamin eagerly. ‘Then you could make calls an’ people could call on you.’
‘All very well, Benjamin,’ said Hannah, ‘but it will be difficult to find someone willing to let us a place for a short time.’
Benjamin struck his breast in a theatrical manner, which was his old way of showing that he would handle the matter, and then gave a shamefaced laugh and said, ‘I will find you sump-thin’, modom. Leave it to Benjamin.’
‘While we are on the subject of calls,’ said Hannah, ‘where did you manage to get those cards?’
‘Printer I used to know,’ said Benjamin. ‘Did ’em cheap.’
‘Then you must tell me what I owe you.’
‘Later,’ said Benjamin. ‘I’ll go out now and find us somewhere to live, suitable to our consequences.’
‘Consequence,’ corrected Hannah, but Benjamin had gone.