Sprig Muslin

by Georgette Heyer

  Amanda had not bargained for this bucolic character, and for a moment she hesitated, not quite knowing whether to advance, or to draw back. The youth, catching sight of her, stood staring, allowing both his jaw, and the empty crate he was holding, to drop. If Amanda had been unprepared to see him, he was even more unprepared to see, emerging from the Red Lion, such a vision of beauty as she presented to his astonished gaze.

  ‘Hush!’ commanded Amanda, in a hissing whisper.

  The youth blinked at her, but was obediently silent.

  Amanda cast a wary look towards the kitchen-window. ‘Are you going to take that cart away?’ she demanded.

  His jaw dropped lower; he nodded.

  ‘Well, will you let me ride in it, if you please?’ She added, as she saw his eyes threaten to start from their sockets: ‘I am escaping from a Deadly Peril! Oh, pray make haste, and say I may go in your cart!’

  Young Mr Ninfield’s head was in a whirl, but his mother had impressed upon him that he must always be civil to members of the Quality, so he uttered gruffly: ‘You’re welcome, miss.’

  ‘Not so loud!’ begged Amanda. ‘I am very much obliged to you! How shall I climb into it?’

  Young Mr Ninfield’s gaze travelled slowly from her face to her gown of delicate muslin. ‘It ain’t fitting!’ he said, in a hoarse whisper. ‘There’s been tatties in it, and a dozen pullets, and a couple o’ bushels o’ kindling!’

  ‘It doesn’t signify! If you could lift me into it, I can cover myself with those sacks, and no one will see me. Oh, pray be quick! The case is quite desperate! Can’t you lift me?’

  The feat was well within Mr Ninfield’s power, but the thought of picking up this fragile beauty almost made him swoon. However, she seemed quite determined to ride in his cart, so he manfully obeyed her. She was feather-light, and smelled deliciously of violets. Mr Ninfield, handling her with all the caution he would have expended on his mother’s best crockery, suffered another qualm. ‘I don’t like to!’ he said, holding her like a baby in his muscular arms. ‘You’ll get your pretty dress all of a muck!’

  ‘Joe!’ suddenly called Mrs Sheet, from within the house. ‘Joe!’

  ‘Quickly!’ Amanda urged him.

  Thus adjured, Mr Ninfield gave a gulp, and tipped her neatly into the cart, where she instantly lay down on the floor, and became screened from his bemused gaze by the sides of the cart.

  ‘The pickled cherries for your ma, Joe!’ screeched Mrs Sheet, from the kitchen-window. ‘If I hadn’t well-nigh forgot them! Wait, now, till I fetch the jar out to you!’

  ‘Do not betray me!’ Amanda implored him, trying to pull the empty sacks over herself.

  Mr Ninfield was astonished. Mrs Sheet, besides being a lifelong crony of his mother’s, was his godmother, and he had always looked upon her as a kindly and benevolent person. As she came out into the yard, he almost expected to find that she had undergone a transformation, and was relieved to see that her plump countenance was still as good-natured as ever. She handed a covered jar to him, bidding him take care to keep it the right way up. ‘And mind you give my love to your ma, and thank her for the eggs, and tell your pa Sheet would have settled for the kindling, and that, only that he’s serving a gentleman,’ she said. ‘We’ve got Quality in the house: a very fine-seeming gentleman, and the prettiest young lady you ever did see! Likely she’s his niece. Poor lamb, she was took ill in the carriage, and is laid down in my best chamber at this very moment.’

  Mr Ninfield did not know what to reply to this, but as he was generally inarticulate his godmother set no particular store by his silence. She gave him a resounding kiss, repeated her injunction to take care of the pickled cherries, and went back into the house.

  Mr Ninfield picked up the empty crate, and peeped cautiously over the side of the cart. From its floor a pair of bright, dark eyes questioned him. ‘Has she gone?’ whispered Amanda.

  ‘Ay.’

  ‘Then pray let us go too!’

  ‘Ay,’ said Mr Ninfield again. ‘I’ll have to put this crate in – if convenient, miss.’

  ‘Yes, pray do so! And I will hold the jar for you,’ said Amanda obligingly.

  Matters being thus satisfactorily arranged, Mr Ninfield went to the horse’s head, and began to lead the placid animal out of the yard, on to the road. The wheels of the cart being shod with iron, Amanda was considerably jolted, but she made no complaint. The horse plodded along the road in a westerly direction, Mr Ninfield walking beside it, pondering deeply the extraordinary adventure that had befallen him. His slow but profound cogitations caused him, at the end of several minutes, to say suddenly: ‘Miss!’

  ‘Yes?’ replied Amanda.

  ‘Where would you be wishful I should take you?’ enquired Mr Ninfield.

  ‘Well, I am not perfectly sure,’ said Amanda. ‘Is there anyone in sight?’

  ‘No,’ replied Mr Ninfield, having stared fixedly up and down the road for a moment or two.

  Reassured on this point, Amanda knelt up, and looked down at her rescuer over the side of the cart. ‘Where are you going yourself?’ she asked chattily.

  ‘Back home,’ he replied. ‘Leastways –’

  ‘Where is your home? Is it on this road?’

  He shook his head, jerking his thumb towards the south. ‘Whitethorn Farm,’ he explained laconically.

  ‘Oh!’ Amanda looked thoughtfully at him, considering a new scheme. A slow tide of bashful crimson crept up to the roots of his hair; he smiled shyly up at her, and then looked quickly away, in case she should be affronted. But the smile decided the matter. ‘Do you live there with your mother?’ asked Amanda.

  ‘Ay. And me dad. It’s Dad’s farm, and Granfer’s afore him, and me great-granfer’s afore him,’ he said, becoming loquacious.

  ‘Would your mother let me stay there for a little while, do you think?’

  This brought his head round again. He had not the smallest notion of what his mother’s views might be, but he said ecstatically: ‘Ay!’

  ‘Good!’ said Amanda. ‘It so happens that I never thought of it before, but I now see that the thing for me to do is to become a dairymaid. I should like it of all things! I daresay you could teach me how to milk a cow, couldn’t you?’

  Mr Ninfield, dazzled by the very thought of teaching a fairy princess to milk a cow, gulped, and uttered once again his favourite monosyllable: ‘Ay!’ He then fell into a daze, from which he was recalled by the sight of an approaching vehicle. He pointed this out to Amanda, but she had seen it already, and had disappeared from view. He gave it as his opinion that she had best remain hid until they reached the lane leading, by way of the village of Keyston, to Whitethorn Farm. Fortunately, since she found it extremely uncomfortable to crouch on the floor of the cart, this was not very far distant. As soon as Mr Ninfield told her that they had left the post-road, she bobbed up again, and desired him to lift her down, so that she could ride on the shaft, as he was now doing.

  ‘For it smells of hens on the floor,’ she informed him, ‘besides being very dirty. Do you think your mother would be vexed if we ate some of these pickled cherries? I am excessively hungry!’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Ninfield, for the second time recklessly committing his parent.

  Nine

  At the end of half an hour, Mr Theale consulted his watch. He thought that he would give Amanda a little longer, and took himself and his cigarillo out on to the road. There was nothing much to be seen there, and after strolling up and down for a few minutes he went back into the inn, where the landlord met him with the offer of a slice or two of home-cured ham, by way of a nuncheon. It was not yet noon, but Mr Theale had partaken of breakfast at an unwontedly early hour, and the suggestion appealed strongly to him. He disposed of several slices of ham, followed these up with a generous portion of cheese, dug from the centre of a ripe Stilton
, and washed down the whole with a large tankard of beer. He then felt fortified against the rigours of travel, and, as Amanda had still not reappeared, requested Mrs Sheet to step upstairs to see how she did.

  Mrs Sheet climbed laboriously up the stairs, but soon came back again, to report that the young lady was not in the best bedchamber.

  ‘Not there?’ repeated Mr Theale incredulously.

  ‘Happen she’s in the coffee-room, sir,’ said Mrs Sheet placidly.

  ‘She ain’t there,’ asserted the landlord. ‘Stands to reason she couldn’t be, because his honour’s been eating a bite of ham there this half hour past. I daresay she stepped out for a breath of fresh air while you was eating your nuncheon, sir.’

  Mr Theale felt that this was unlikely, but if Amanda was not in the Red Lion there seemed to be no other solution to the mystery of her disappearance, and he again stepped out on to the road, and looked up and down it. There was no sign of Amanda, but Mr Sheet, who had followed him out of the inn, thought that very likely she had been tempted to explore the spinney that lay just beyond the last straggling cottages of the village. Sir Gareth would not have wasted as much as five minutes in hunting for Amanda through a spinney, but Mr Theale, as yet unacquainted with her remarkable propensity for running away, supposed that it was just possible that she had walked out for a stroll, as he himself had done earlier. No doubt, with the sun beating down upon the road, she had not been able to resist entering the spinney. It was thoughtless of her, and, indeed, decidedly vexatious, but young persons, he believed, were irresistibly drawn by woodland, and had, besides, very little regard for the clock. He walked down the road until he came abreast of the spinney, and shouted. When he had done that several times, he swore, and himself entered the spinney through a gap in the hedge. A track wound through the trees, and he went down it for some distance, shouting Amanda’s name at intervals. It was not as hot under the trees as on the sun-scorched road, but quite hot enough to make a full-bodied gentleman, clad in a tightly fitting coat, and with a voluminous neckcloth swathed in intricate folds under his chin, sweat profusely. Mr Theale mopped his face, and realized with annoyance that the high, starched points of his collar had begun to wilt. He also realized, although with some incredulity, that Amanda had given him the slip; but why she had done so, or where she could be hiding, he could not imagine. He retraced his steps, and as he plodded up the dusty road the disquieting suspicion entered his head that she was not, after all, a member of the muslin company, but in truth the innocent child she looked to be. If that were so, her desire to escape from Sir Gareth’s clutches (and, indeed, his own) was very understandable. No doubt, thought Mr Theale, virtuously indignant, Sir Gareth had encountered her after her expulsion from her amorous employer’s establishment, and had taken dastardly advantage of her friendless, and possibly penniless, condition. Mr Theale’s morals were erratic, but he considered that such conduct was beyond the line of what was allowable. It was also ramshackle. Deceiving innocent damsels, as he could have told Sir Gareth from his own experience, invariably led to trouble. They might appear to be alone in the world, but you could depend upon it that as soon as the mischief was done some odiously respectable relative would come to light, which meant the devil to pay, and no pitch hot.

  This reflection brought with it certain unwelcome memories, and made Mr Theale feel that to abandon Amanda to her fate, which had at first seemed the most sensible thing to do, would perhaps be unwise. Since she knew his name, it would be prudent to recapture her, for heaven alone knew what sort of account she might spread of the day’s events if he was unable to convince her that his interest in her had all the time been purely philanthropic. That could quite easily be done, given the opportunity. The thing to do then, he decided, would be to deliver her into his housekeeper’s charge, and to leave it to that capable matron to discover what family she possessed. Of course, if she really had no relations living, and seemed inclined, once her alarm had been soothed, to take a fancy to him – But that was for the future. The immediate task was to find her, and that, in so small a village, ought not to be very difficult.

  Mr Theale, arrived once more at the Red Lion, proceeded to grapple with the task. It proved to be fatiguing, fruitless, and extremely embarrassing. Mrs Sheet, on thinking the matter over, had remembered the bandboxes. It was just conceivable, though very unlikely, that Amanda had wandered out to take the air, and had contrived to lose herself; that she had burdened herself with two bandboxes for a country stroll was quite inconceivable, and indicated to Mrs Sheet not a stroll but a flight. And why, demanded Mrs Sheet of her lord, should the pretty dear wish to run away from her lawful uncle?

  Mr Sheet scratched his head, and admitted that it was a regular doubler.

  ‘Mark my words, Sheet!’ she said. ‘He’s no more her uncle than what you are!’

  ‘He never said he was her uncle,’ Mr Sheet pointed out. ‘All he said was that she was a young relative of his.’

  ‘It don’t signify. It’s my belief he’s no relation at all. He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.’

  ‘He don’t look like one,’ said the landlord dubiously.

  ‘He’s one of those seducing London beaux,’ insisted his wife. ‘He’s got a wicked look in his eye: I noticed it straight off. Them bandboxes, too! I thought it was queer, a young lady not having what I’d call respectable luggage.’

  ‘The luggage was on the other coach,’ argued the landlord.

  ‘Not hers, it wasn’t,’ replied Mrs Sheet positively. ‘She had all her things packed into those two boxes, for I saw them with my own eyes. Lor’ bless me, why ever didn’t she tell me my fine gentleman was making off with her unlawful? I wish I knew where she was got to!’

  But no efforts of hers, or of Mr Theale’s, could discover the least trace of Amanda. She had apparently been snatched up into the clouds, for no one in the village had seen her, and no one could recall that any of the vehicles which had passed through it had halted to pick up a passenger. Mr Theale was forced, in the end, to accept the landlord’s theory, which was that Amanda had slipped unperceived up the road, and had been picked up beyond the village by some carriage or stage-coach. Mrs Sheet clicked her tongue disapprovingly and shook her head; but since it would never have occurred to her that a young lady of undoubted quality, dressed, too, in the first style of elegance, would have sought refuge in a farm-tumbril, the suspicion that Joe Ninfield might be able to throw light on the mystery never so much as entered her mind. And if it had entered it, she would have dismissed it, because she knew that Joe was a shy, honest lad, who would never dream either of deceiving his godmother, or of taking up with a strange girl who was plainly a lady born.

  Mr Theale was forced to continue his journey alone; and by the time he climbed into his carriage again, not only was he exhausted by his exertions, but he was as much ruffled as it was possible for a man of his temperament to be. His enquiries in Bythorne awoke a most unwelcome curiosity in its inhabitants’ breasts; and although Mr Sheet continued to treat him with proper deference it was otherwise with the redoubtable mistress of the house, who made no attempt to conceal her unflattering opinion of him. Lacking the inventive genius which characterized Amanda, he was quite unable to offer Mrs Sheet an explanation which carried conviction even to his own ears; and an attempt to depress her presumption merely provoked her into favouring him with her views on so-called gentlemen who went ravening about the country, dressed up as fine as fivepence, the better to deceive the innocent maidens they sought to ruin.

  It was some time before his spirits recovered their tone. The wooden countenance of his coachman did nothing to allay the irritation of his nerves. Mr Theale cherished few illusions, and he was well aware that James had not only heard every word of Mrs Sheet’s homily, but would lose no time in regaling his fellow servants with the tale of his master’s discomfiture. James would have to be sent packing, which was as vexatious as anyt
hing that had happened during this disastrous day, since no other coachman had ever suited him half as well. Moreover, so many hours had been squandered that it was now doubtful whether he would reach Melton Mowbray that evening. The moon was at the full, but although moonlight would enable him to continue his journey far into the night, it would not save from being spoiled the excellent dinner that would certainly be prepared for his delectation, or prevent his becoming fagged to death. He was much inclined to think that if only he had not directed his valet to drive on he would have spent the night at Oakham, where, at the Crown, he was well-known, and could rely upon every attention’s being paid to his comfort. But his valet and his baggage were gone past reclaim, and the only piece of luggage he carried with him was his dressing-case.

  He was still trying to decide, four miles beyond Thrapston, what would be best to do, when Fate intervened, and settled the question for him: the perch of the carriage broke, and the body fell forward on to the box.

  Although considerably shaken, Mr Theale was not much hurt by this accident. Its worst feature was the necessity it put him under of trudging for nearly a mile to the nearest inn. This was at the village of Brigstock, and was a small posting-house, too unpretentious to have hitherto attracted Mr Theale’s patronage. His intention was to hire a post-chaise there, but so snug did he find its parlour, so comfortable the winged chair into which the landlord coaxed him, so excellent the brandy with which he strove to recruit his strength, and so tempting the dinner that was offered him, that he very soon abandoned all idea of proceeding any farther on his journey that day. After the cavalier treatment he had been subjected to by Mrs Sheet, the solicitude of the host of the Brigstock Arms came as balm to his bruised spirit. Besides, his natty boots were pinching his feet, and he was anxious to have them pulled off. The landlord begged him to accept the loan of a pair of slippers, promised that a night-shirt and cap should be forthcoming, and assured him that nothing would give his good wife more pleasure than to launder his shirt and neckcloth for him while he slept. That clinched the matter: Mr Theale graciously consented to honour the house with his custom, and stretched out a plump leg to have the boot hauled off. Once rid of Hessians which were never made for country walking, he began to revive, and was able to devote a mind undistracted by aching feet to the important question of what dishes to select for his dinner. Encouraged and assisted by the landlord, he ordered a delicate yet sustaining meal to be prepared, and settled down to enjoy the healing properties of cigarillos, a comfortable chair, and a bottle of brandy.