The Ladies In Love Series

by M. C. Beaton

  There was great speculation in the Warburton household over what had become of the Marquess of Merechester. The coachman and stable staff had remained silent, but James, the second footman, said that he had seen his lordship riding off hell-for-leather in the middle of the storm.

  Cissie tossed her curls. “I wonder what Felicia said to give him such a fright,” she said.

  Felicia raised her delicate eyebrows and looked around the gentlemen as if to say, “Do you see what a cat she is?”

  “I only told him Amaryllis had gone off with Lord Donnelly without a chaperon,” she said.

  Lady Warburton bit her lip. It had been stupid of Donnelly to send back the carriage, claiming it was on her orders.

  “I don’t think Lord Merechester went to Caddam to see Amaryllis at all,” said Agatha hotly. “Why should he? He was engaged to her once, but he can’t stand the sight of her now.”

  “Hold your impertinent tongue, miss,” scolded Lady Evans.

  Lady Warburton bridled. “If you do not mind, Lady Evans,” she said, “I will correct my daughter’s behavior myself should I deem it necessary. Amaryllis has always been a strange girl. I let her go with Lord Donnelly because I thought it a kindness, she seemed so smitten by the young man. Merechester has no doubt gone to visit friends in the neighborhood.”

  “But if Amaryllis has spent the night with Lord Donnelly, she will have to marry him,” said Agatha gleefully.

  “That may be the case,” said Lord Warburton. “Amaryllis Duvane is a respectable female, and we cannot have her reputation besmirched.”

  “You are altogether too nice with regard to Miss Duvane all of a sudden,” said Lady Evans. “Had you been concerned at the right moment, then you would not have let her set out on such a hazardous journey.”

  “She is old enough to know her own mind,” snapped Lady Warburton. “All this harsh criticism is affecting my poor nerves badly. Agatha, give me that green bottle.”

  Lady Warburton poured herself out a large tablespoonful, drank it down, shuddered, and then smiled around the room.

  “Strange,” mused Mr. Chalmers, “her medicine bottle looks exactly like a gin bottle.”

  Tempers were frayed among the Warburton family and their housebound guests. Greasy raindrops streamed down the windows, and the wind moaned like a banshee around the old house.

  Lord Warburton strode up and down, his hands behind his back. “If this thaw keeps up, they should be home this evening.”

  “Not they,” said Mr. Giles-Denton. “The roads will be quagmires. London road will be all right, of course. If they think to make a detour.”

  “They’ll need to hire some sort of carriage,” said Mr. Chalmers reasonably. “Three people won’t get far on Merechester’s horse.”

  Lady Warburton had recourse to the green bottle again. This time she didn’t use the spoon but turned her back on the company and swigged a great mouthful directly from the bottle.

  She began to want someone to blame for this. The thought of Merechester and Amaryllis in the intimacy of a snowbound inn made her grind her teeth. She hoped Donnelly could be trusted to keep them apart.

  She felt a rare spasm of rage against Cissie. Why couldn’t the silly minx watch that wretched tongue of hers?

  “If Amaryllis doesn’t hurry back, then I won’t have anything to wear for the ball,” mourned Cissie.

  “Then wear one of your old gowns,” said her mother testily. “Lord knows you have enough of them, not that it has done you any good either. No matter how finely we dress you, you always manage to alienate any gentleman who comes within your orbit.”

  There was an embarrassed silence. Cissie burst into noisy tears and fled from the room. Conscience-stricken, Lady Warburton ran after her.

  It took quite an hour to soothe her daughter’s injured feelings. But one thing was made plain to Lady Warburton. Cissie was in love with Merechester.

  And what Cissie wanted, Cissie would get.

  Chapter 6

  Amaryllis entered the dining room with a suffocating feeling of excitement. She had been turning over all the things he had said. She remembered he had said her rejection of him had caused him pain.

  And he had kissed her.

  In Amaryllis’s world, the warm pressure of a handclasp was tantamount to a proposal of marriage.

  But the Marquess was not alone. Lord Donnelly was seated opposite him in front of the fire.

  Lord Donnelly jumped to his feet as Amaryllis entered the dining room. “Miss Duvane!” he cried. “My humble apologies. I must have been exhausted to fall asleep like that. Please say you forgive me.”

  “Your apology is accepted,” said Amaryllis, wishing him miles away.

  The Marquess rose to his feet and announced he was going to the landlord’s quarters to shave and wash.

  Amaryllis did not want to be left alone with Lord Donnelly, but it seemed she had no choice.

  “You are looking very beautiful,” said Lord Donnelly, turning his frank, friendly gaze on her. Privately, he noticed the bloom on her cheek, the fashionable hairstyle, and the swollen lips. Something had to be done quickly.

  As she sat opposite him, he leaned forward in a confiding way. “Sure, it’s miserable I am that I forsook you,” he said. “I hope you were not… er… embarrassed. Merechester has a wild reputation with the ladies.”

  “Oh,” said Amaryllis frostily. “Do you think we shall be able to travel today, my lord?”

  “Yes, a bit of a reputation,” went on Lord Donnelly, deliberately ignoring her question. “You see, he needs must always go and make the ladies fall in love with him, and rumor has it he becomes overwarm in his attentions, so much so that the fair damsels think he had marriage in mind. Why, the man’s nearly been up to the altar with a shotgun in his back.”

  “I don’t want to discuss Lord Merechester,” said Amaryllis in a thin voice.

  Lord Donnelly saw his remark had hit home. “I’ll go around to the stables and see what the lads say about the roads,” he said. He wanted Amaryllis to be left alone with these new thoughts about Lord Merechester’s infidelity.

  Amaryllis sat quietly after he had left, feeling very small and lost. Because she did not think much of herself and had become used to being called a drab, she easily jumped to the conclusion that the Marquess’s lovemaking had meant nothing to him.

  By the time the Marquess returned, the glow had gone from her eyes and she sat very still by the fire.

  “Are you ready to leave?” he asked.

  “How can we?” asked Amaryllis. “Lord Donnelly has gone to find out the state of the roads, but the road that leads from here to Patterns must be a sea of mud.”

  “Probably,” he said, picking up his now dry coat and shrugging himself into it. “But if we take my horse, we can go the long way around by the London road. The stagecoach driver sent riders up ahead, and they report the road to be in fair condition.”

  “Perhaps we should wait,” ventured Amaryllis. “Lord Donnelly should return any moment.”

  “All the more reason to leave,” he remarked, putting on his benjamin and cramming his beaver hat on his head.

  He picked up Amaryllis’s cloak and silently held it out to her. He put it around her shoulders and then bent his head and gently kissed the back of her neck.

  “Don’t do that!” Amaryllis jerked away as if she had been stung. “I do not like casual, meaningless caresses.”

  “And you so expert at giving and receiving them.” His blue eyes were blazing with fury as she turned around.

  “My lord,” said Amaryllis, her voice holding an infuriating note of weary patience, “please leave me here. I can look after myself.”

  “I think not,” he said harshly. “Who knows? You might start accepting casual, meaningless caresses from Donnelly.”

  Amaryllis thought furiously. There was either the agony of going home with him, or the irritation of staying with Lord Donnelly. Lord Donnelly had proved himself to be a villain. Lord Me
rechester’s behavior was only open to doubt.

  So she went meekly enough with him out of the inn. The landlord’s wife supplied Amaryllis with a calash to cover her bonnet, and wooden pattens to cover her feet.

  “Where is the carriage?” asked Amaryllis, looking about the dismal scene of the inn yard. Sheets of rain were pockmarking the puddles. Beyond the inn yard, the road had turned into a river, rushing between crumbling banks of snow.

  “No carriage,” he said. “We both take my horse. You’ll have to ride pillion.”

  Amaryllis quailed. They would both be soaked to the skin before they had gone even a yard.

  “Come along,” he said. “The coach has already left, and if the great, overladen, cumbersome thing can get through, then so can we.”

  The ostler led the Marquess’s hunter forward. He sprang lightly into the saddle and then edged his horse over to the mounting block.

  Amaryllis climbed onto the pillion in front of him. He put an arm around her waist and they set off out of the inn yard.

  Lord Donnelly came running out of the inn and shouted something after them. Amaryllis pretended not to hear, and the Marquess did not turn his head.

  They were two miles out on the London road, and both were drenched to the skin, when they came across the stagecoach travelers, making their way on foot back to Caddam.

  “The coach overturned,” yelled one man. “Best not go on. The road gets worse.”

  “We’ll manage,” called the Marquess.

  The horse moved on through the white-and-black world of melting snow and roaring water, passing the sad bulk of the overturned coach. Small streams had turned to torrents which swept across the road, and twice they had to dismount and lead the horse.

  “Is there another town hereabouts?” said the Marquess at last.

  “There’s a village,” replied Amaryllis. “Totten.”

  “Does it have an inn?”

  “A small one called the King’s Head.”

  “Is it far?”

  “I don’t know,” said Amaryllis, looking around desperately. It was like traveling through a waterfall. The wind was rising again, and great buffets of icy rain drove into her face. “I cannot get my bearings. Everything looks different… what I can see of it.”

  The horse stumbled, and the Marquess reined in and dismounted, “The animal is tired,” he said. “I will walk. Gather up the reins.”

  The sky was growing darker as the early winter night began to settle in.

  And then, all at once, a blurred huddle of buildings loomed up through the gathering dusk.

  “That must be Totten,” shouted Amaryllis, above the roar of the rain.

  “Thank God,” he called. “At which end of the village is the inn?”

  “The far end,” said Amaryllis bitterly.

  “It would be. But we must dry ourselves and get warm or we will both die of chills.”

  They plodded silently past thatch-covered houses.

  Candle flames appeared like yellow smears behind the thick glass of the cottage windows. A dog ran across the road, and the horse swerved and stumbled.

  “There’s the inn,” called the Marquess.

  Amaryllis peered through the rain. The King’s Head seemed smaller and dingier than Amaryllis remembered. She had once stopped there with Agatha and Cissie on a summer’s day. It had seemed very pretty then with its wattled walls and thick thatch.

  Outside the inn, the Marquess held up his arms and Amaryllis fell into them, frozen and stiff and sore. There was a stitch in her side from having ridden sidesaddle, and she felt the skin on her leg which had been next to the saddle was rubbed raw.

  “Let us go indoors quickly,” she shivered.

  “Not until my poor Brutus has been rubbed down and fed,” said the Marquess, patting his weary horse.

  “And I suppose I could drop from cold simply because the horse must come first,” said Amaryllis made pettish by cold and exhaustion.

  “No one is asking you to help,” he said curtly. “Go into the inn and explain our predicament and see if the landlord can lend us any dry clothes.”

  “No, I’ll come to the stables with you.”

  “Why?”

  “I will find it difficult to explain to the landlord what we are doing together.”

  “Fustian! The weather is explanation enough.”

  “I can’t!” said Amaryllis, near to tears.

  “I confess to a sudden sympathy for Lady Warburton,” he said nastily. “Are you usually this useless?”

  “I am not used to standing in the middle of nowhere, soaked to the skin, being harangued by an unfeeling brute,” screamed Amaryllis, suddenly beside herself with rage.

  “If I were an unfeeling brute, I would not have walked all this way and let you ride.”

  “You did not consider my comfort. You only thought about Brutus.”

  “Well, you must admit that of the two of you, he is the more worthy of consideration. I can do without you in an emergency. I cannot do without him.”

  The door of the inn opened and a head and an arm holding a lantern appeared.

  “What’s to do?” called a voice.

  “Stranded travelers,” called the Marquess. “Where are your stables?”

  “Wait till I get my coat,” came the reply.

  The head and lantern disappeared.

  “Don’t stand there with your teeth chattering,” said the Marquess. “Go into the inn.”

  “No,” said Amaryllis stubbornly.

  “Of all the useless, spoiled females, I have ever met… Ah, landlord. We are sore in need of warmth and dry clothes if you can help us.”

  The landlord was a small, wizened man with bandy legs. He held up the lantern and looked at them suspiciously.

  “I’ll need to ask you who you are,” he said. “Got caught before by a gentleman of the High Toby.”

  “I,” said Amaryllis savagely, “am Miss Duvane from Patterns, and this is the Marquess of Merechester. We have been trying to make our way home. We are bone-tired and freezing, and all you can do is stand there like a great lummox and accuse us of being highwaymen. It… it’s t-too m-much.” And with that, the overwrought Amaryllis burst into tears.

  “Now, then,” said the landlord. “We do have to make sure in an out-of-the-way place like this. Come with me, my lord, and I’ll show you the stables. Please go into the inn, miss, and I’ll be back directly.”

  “And do try to pull yourself together,” snapped the Marquess. “Blubbering like a baby will not help the situation one whit.”

  Mad with rage, Amaryllis kicked him in the shins, the iron ring on the sole of her pattens making a satisfying thwack.

  “Vixen!” He seized her by the shoulders and shook her till her teeth rattled.

  “Oh, please don’t, miss, my lord,” begged the landlord. “’Tain’t no use you argyfying and getting wetter and colder.”

  Amaryllis stalked off into the inn, and the Marquess followed the landlord around to the stables.

  To Amaryllis’s relief, the landlord’s wife, Mrs. Fletcher, recognized her, and clucked in motherly dismay over her wretched state.

  The little inn boasted only three bedrooms, which were fortunately all empty. Mrs. Fletcher led Amaryllis up to one of them.

  It was very small and dark and smelled of damp and dry rot. The old beams were so low they almost grazed Amaryllis’s head. Mrs. Fletcher lit a couple of tallow candles and then the fire. Her daughter, a thin, white-faced creature, came in carrying two cans of hot water.

  “Sit by the fire, miss,” said the landlord’s wife, “and I’ll see what I can find you to wear. I know it’s not fitting, but a servant girl we had ups and offs with a traveler, and left her duds behind. My clothes are too big for you, and Beth,” jerking her head at her daughter, “ain’t got but the one gown for winter and two for summer.”

  “Anything will do,” said Amaryllis wearily. The fire was smoking dreadfully and seemed to do nothing to dispel the damp
chill of the room.

  When Mrs. Fletcher came back with an armful of clothes, Amaryllis indicated the fire. “Does it always smoke so much?”

  “Only when the wind’s in the east,” said Mrs. Fletcher. “Any other direction and that fireplace is the best in the county. When you are dressed, my husband is going to serve you and my lord with a meal in the coffee room, us not having a dining room.”

  “Thank you,” said Amaryllis, waiting for her to leave so that she could change into dry clothes.

  Mrs. Fletcher hesitated in the doorway, pleating her apron in her work-roughened hands.

  “Would you and my lord be eloping, miss?” she said.

  “Good heavens, no!” said Amaryllis, looking as bad-tempered and glacial as Lady Warburton. “What on earth gave you such a nonsensical idea?”

  “I’m right sorry, miss, but we do get couples from time to time, and there’s always trouble.” Mrs. Fletcher leaned one plump shoulder against the doorjamb, and showed all the signs of one about to settle down to a good gossip.

  “I do mind,” she said, “squire’s daughter over at Three Elms what eloped with Johnny Mercer. They hired this chaise and got Joey Duddle, the postillion, to drive them, promising him something extra should he get them up the Gretna Road. But Joey had forgotten to wear his nightcap the night before, and the cold he got as a result made him deaf. He had prime animals harnessed up and he was scampering away at record speed with the young couple in the back, satisfied that no one could catch ’em now. Well, there was a crash and a crack and a scream from the lady. The bolt connecting forewheels with body had snapped—and the chaise fell forward in the middle of the road. Johnny Mercer was screaming blue murder, but that deaf postillion heard not a word and cantered forward until he drew up at the next posting inn with nothing but a forecarriage and a young lady’s trunk behind him. By the time he hurried back, the young lady’s family had arrived on the scene and the elopement was over.”

  Amaryllis shivered and Mrs. Fletcher laughed heartily. “The people we’ve had here. Five month ago, a pretty gentleman had dinner here, roasted chicken and bottle o’ wine. After dinner, he went out into the yard and rode away. He hadn’t paid his reckoning, so my Jem took out his horse and rode after him and caught him at a place called Two Bridges, and he says, ‘I believe, sir, you forgot to pay.’