“Oh, dear.” Meg reached out and touched the woman’s shoulder, trying to steady her. “I’m sure there’s been a misunderstanding.”
“Maybe you’re in league with her, then!” the merchant snapped. “Give it here or I’ll see the both of you swing.”
“Mind your tongue.” Karen stepped protectively forward. “My mistress is a lady and you’re no gentleman, anyone can see that.”
“Now, now.” The constable held up his hands. “What about the matter of a missing purse?”
“Arthur! Yoo-hoo, my dear!” The merchant’s solidly built wife leaned out of the coach, waving something. “It was here on the floor, my sweet. Must have dropped out while you were sleeping.”
“Oh, well,” the fellow blustered, “no harm done then.” The spectators snorted, clearly torn between amusement and disappointment.
“No harm?” Meg said. “Regard this poor woman.” Indeed, the creature in the brown cape had dissolved into a fit of trembling, to the extent that she would have fallen. had not Meg and Karen supported her.
“Apologies, miss,” muttered the merchant.
“What am I to do?” A plaintive whine issued from between the woman’s teeth, which were none too straight. “I cannot go on, I simply cannot. It was wrong from the start. I must return. Oh, please—” she grasped Meg’s arm “—I haven’t the fare back to London. I must... my charges... I simply cannot... God help me, what am I to do?”
Meg leveled a stare at the merchant. “This is your doing, sir.”
“Well, I hardly thought...” He shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “Oh, dash it, I’ll pay the blasted fare. Martha!” This to his wife. “Come and help here. Yes, yes, we’ll see she gets back all right. Why are all these people standing about? Go on, the lot of you! If you want a show, you’ll have to pay admission.”
The crowd dispersed reluctantly, and the brown-cloaked woman was entrusted into Martha’s care. Much relieved, Meg yielded to Karen’s demands that they retire into the inn.
With more self-possession than she had ever before shown, Karen established Meg in a private parlour and went out to secure a post chaise to Derby and to see about her own transportation to Liverpool.
The tea and biscuits provided by the inn proved tolerable, but Meg nodded off to sleep before she could finish them. When Karen returned, Meg awoke with a start. “Is everything set?” she asked.
“Oh, yes, miss,” cried Karen. “I’ve found a wagon driver from Liverpool who said Peter asked him to look out for me, but he’s leaving right away. Your post chaise has to change horses, and the coachman says he wants a spot of food, and then he’ll call for you. Will that be all right, miss?”
“Yes, that sounds fine.” Even a woman who couldn’t see properly could hardly get lost if the coachman came to fetch her. “Good luck, Karen.” She handed the maid a small silver locket. “A wedding present.”
“Thank you, miss.” Karen flung her arms around her mistress. “You’ve been so good to me! I’ll write to you from Canada, as long as you don’t mind the spelling.”
“Indeed not.” This farewell was even sadder than the ones in London, as Karen and her Peter would most likely never return to England. A tear slipped down Meg’s face and she made no attempt to wipe it off.
After Karen left, Meg couldn’t seem to fall back to sleep. Indeed, she realized with a jolt, this was the first time in her gently bred life that she had ever been entirely on her own, without the protection of a servant or relative.
Though it would surely be a matter of only half an hour, or perhaps an hour at most, before the driver came for her, Meg listened carefully to every noise in the hallway. She had read stories of women menaced in isolated castles, and while she wasn’t so cork-brained as to expect dark-cloaked villains in the hallway, inns sheltered all manner of people. Nervously, Meg bolted the door.
If only she could see better! Then she might go downstairs—not into the taproom, of course, but in a place within public view where none was likely to threaten her. But in her state of comparative helplessness, she was far better off here.
Her mind returned to the scene outside. What would have transpired had not the merchant’s purse turned up? That poor woman might have been arrested; perhaps even Meg and Karen with her. In London, cheering masses gleefully attended the frequent hangings. Could such a thing really happen to innocent women?
Never before had she realized how sheltered her life was. Compared to the danger of arrest, the scandal that had loomed so large a scant time earlier now faded to insignificance.
In this parlour far from London, Meg saw the members of the beau monde for the foolish, artificial people they really were. Such fuss over Beau Brummell, whose only accomplishments were his choice of a tailor and his rapier wit! How absurd that the highest lords and ladies should shun a woman merely because she failed to acknowledge his greeting.
The first few months of this past season had been met with hope and eager expectation. At each ball she had imagined she might discover a man who would meet her heart’s needs.
Now Meg could see that she had become disenchanted even before her ridiculously aggrandized scandal. Perhaps her departure was a blessing in disguise. But what lay ahead?
A rapping at the door roused her to herself.
“Yes?” She wondered if the pounding of her heart could be heard by the unseen visitor.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but the innkeeper said there was a Miss Lindsay here and I’m sent to fetch her to her carriage,” said a polite male voice.
Much relieved, Meg drew the bolt and opened the door. Before her stood a coachman exquisitely clad in black-and-silver livery. It was beyond any uniform she would have expected for a post chaise driver, but no doubt this fellow took pride in appearances, and Meg could only think well of him for that.
“I’ve been expecting you,” she said, willing to overlook his mispronouncing the name Linley as Lindsay. In her experience, it was a common mistake among tradesmen.
“This is your trunk then, miss?” In a trice, the driver and a young groom carried the cases downstairs, with Meg hurrying in their wake. To her surprise, the driver insisted upon paying the innkeeper for the parlour. “I have my instructions,” he said when she protested, and Meg silently thanked Karen for her thoughtfulness.
The bustle in the courtyard was as great this afternoon as it had been in the morning. Meg could perceive little beyond a great blur of motion and colour, with high-perch phaetons weaving perilously between rude wagon-carts.
“This way, miss,” said the driver, taking Meg’s arm to help her into the chaise.
“What a smart carriage,” she said, impressed by the gleaming black-trimmed silver paint. She even suspected, as he opened the door, that she might have seen a coat of arms on it, but she couldn’t be sure. Perhaps the crest of the inn, she mused.
“Yes, indeed, ma’am.” Despite the correctness of his reply, she heard a puzzled note in the coachman’s voice as he closed the door.
The interior was as elegantly appointed as the rest of the coach. Meg detected no sign of wear in the red velvet of the squabs. This was superior transportation indeed.
She hadn’t been able to see the horses well, but the easy movement of the chaise proved them to be a well-matched, quick-stepping team. Again, Meg marvelled at the fine service in Manchester.
Relieved of the fears that had plagued her at the inn, Meg gazed out with curiosity as they rumbled along. Impossible to recognize landmarks, but that was only to be expected in her case. Still, she enjoyed the rich green colours of rural Cheshire.
The carriage halted much sooner than she’d expected. She squinted through the windows. They had pulled up in the driveway of a great Tudor house, its white-painted plaster set off by a darkened latticework of timbers.
Wherever they were, this most certainly wasn’t Derby.
Chapter Four
The Most Honourable Andrew Harwood Davis, the Marquis of Bryn, laid aside th
e quill pen with which he had been inscribing a letter to his man of affairs in London.
Surely, he reflected wearily as he franked the letter, it should not be necessary for him to make a trip personally on the matter of a marriage settlement. Standish should be able to send him the necessary figures and considerations by post.
The marquis rose from behind the heavy oak desk and moved to the window of his study, gazing through the many-paned glass and over the broad lawns of Brynwood. He would prefer never to visit town again, although one could not forever put aside the duty to resume one’s seat in the House of Lords.
Once he was married, at least he might be spared the attentions of ambitious mothers and their insipid, giggling daughters, Bryn reflected. These past two years, he could barely tolerate the thought of London society and its petty self-absorption.
He turned back to face the dark, masculine room that so perfectly reflected his own appearance. Not a bit of frippery was to be seen among the leather-covered chairs and stern bookcases.
What changes would a wife make? Andrew wondered, leaning back against the desk. None, he hoped, at least not the wife he planned to take.
Germaine Geraint was far from missish, more interested in her horses than in her draperies, he suspected from their one brief encounter at a house party. She ought to blend into his countrified existence with scarcely a ripple.
His interest in her might have struck the casual observer as perfunctory, but Lord Bryn had no jumped-up notions of romance. Marriage for a wealthy nobleman must be a means of securing heirs, with a respectable-enough mate to assure their future acceptance into society.
The marquis put no credence in amorous tomfoolery, and neither, he was pleased to note, did the lady to whom he meant to declare his intentions. Nevertheless, he must order up some new coats and trousers from Weston, who had his measure, and boots from Hoby’s. The marquis glanced down at the aging pair of Hessians he wore. They suited him well enough, but his valet should have remarked on their condition long ago. If Harry were still alive...
A vise squeezed the marquis’s conscience. Harry would indeed have been alive, had it not been for the vainglory two years ago of a young nodcock named Andrew Davis.
The butler knocked lightly at the door and entered. “Begging your pardon, my lord,” said Franklin, “but the children have vanished.”
“Vanished?” repeated Bryn.
“Bertha was tending them—the new upstairs maid, my lord—and they placed a certain small animal about her person.” The butler cleared his throat, and Bryn wondered if he might be covering a chuckle.
“Small animal?” When it came to the misdeeds of his niece and nephew, Bryn frequently found himself repeating words in disbelief.
“A mouse, I believe,” said the butler. “In her, er, consternation over the creature, she lost sight of them, and now they are nowhere to be found.”
“Search the house,” instructed his lordship.
“That has been done.” Franklin betrayed a hint of exasperation. “We know their hiding places, my lord, and they are not in them.”
How one seven-year-old girl and one five-year-old boy could create such continual chaos, Lord Bryn could not imagine. In the eighteen months since his sister and her husband died in a carriage accident, the children had demolished no fewer than three governesses.
“Then search the grounds,” he said.
“Yes, my lord, we are doing so,” replied Franklin. “However, I thought you might wish to be informed.”
“How long have the children been missing?”
“Three hours, my lord.’’
That was a long time for two such small children. “They may have got themselves in too deep this time.” The marquis pushed away from his desk. I’ll take King Arthur and join the search.”
A few minutes later, he was urging the roan stallion forward. This time his young charges might be in serious difficulty, and if night fell before they were rescued, their misadventure could prove dangerous, even deadly.
The rolling countryside of the Cheshire Plain was deceptive. One had the impression that one could see everything for miles, but, in truth, clumps of trees provided more than ample hiding for a pair of tots. Here and there lay crumbling Roman fortifications. Most were located high on wooded ridges, beyond the distance a child might hike in a few hours.
But Bryn knew well from his own childhood that one could stumble upon an intriguing pile of rocks in the most unlikely places. Of these innocent-seeming ruins, more than one had tumbled in treacherously upon a curious child. He had barely escaped injury in such an accident himself.
Tom and Vanessa. They’d been entrusted to him. Had he failed them as tragically as he’d failed Harry?
Distressed, the marquis spurred his horse on toward the town of Marple. He doubted the children had got that far, but couldn’t disregard the chance they had become lost on the moors.
Prior to the past year and a half, it had been Lord Bryn’s impression that his niece and nephew were angelic sprites who, done up in bows and ruffles, descended from their nursery to bow and curtsey silently to their elders before retreating.
He had never been more mistaken in his life.
Perhaps the problem was the governesses one could secure, living so far from London. Well, Standish had apparently found the solution to that, and if the woman were on the mail coach as planned, she should be arriving at Brynwood that same evening. A welcome sight she would be, too, if she proved the equal of this pair of scalawags.
As the sun sank toward the west, the marquis’s spirits lowered accordingly. After shouting their names until he was hoarse, he rode back by the house to be sure the children hadn’t been found. They had not.
Darkness would soon arrive, he thought worriedly, heading south this time. “Tom! Vanessa!” His voice mingled with the thud of King Arthur’s hooves against the soft earth.
Damn. His blasted leg was beginning to hurt where the bullet had nicked the bone. The pain brought with it, as always, a double hurt, the memory of one hot humid August day on the coast of Portugal two years before.
Fresh from his triumphs in the ballrooms of London, the swaggering young Lord Bryn—as he unflatteringly considered his younger self—had set out with Wellington’s troops to teach that Frenchman Bonaparte, a lesson in English courage.
The scene blurred, as the marquis rode through the gathering twilight shouting the youngsters’ names. So long ago, so far away...
The horse leaped a fence and jolted his rider’s sore leg. The renewed torment brought the event back sharply.
Andrew could hear again the shouts and see the white summer uniforms of the French advancing toward the scarlet-clad British. Volleys of shots rang out; pain seared his leg. He fell into the dirt as the columns broke and bayonets flashed around him in the sunlight.
Then someone dragged him off the battlefield. Harry. Where had he come from? Bryn had meant to order the valet to stay safely on board ship. But in his excitement at the forthcoming battle, he’d forgotten.
A shot rang out nearby, and Harry fell. Moments later, the French fled the field, defeated. But for one loyal servant from Cheshire, the respite came too late.
If I’d commanded him to stay behind, we’d both have been safe, Bryn reflected for the hundredth time. But I never gave him a thought. I was too full of my own pride to worry about Harry.
A small cry blotted out his memories. “Uncle Andrew!” Faint, but unmistakable.
Bryn reined in King Arthur and turned east. He spotted a grove of trees, and, emerging from it, two grubby urchins, their faces smeared with purple.
“Berries!” cried Vanessa, the eldest, holding up juice-stained hands.
“You should be whipped, the pair of you!” The marquis tried to hide his relief. The children needed discipline badly, but he’d never been able to bring himself to administer it, not after their tragic loss.
“But they taste so wonderful!” Tom stopped behind his sister, eyes round wi
th delight. “Then it got late.”
“We were only adventuring,” said Vanessa primly. “Like the knights of old.”
“Now where did you hear about that?” Charmed in spite of himself, Bryn descended to collect his errant charges.
“Miss Smithers. Or was it Miss James?” Vanessa shrugged. “One of the governesses liked to tell us stories.”
“Was that the one you poured ink over, or the one you frightened off by pretending to be ghosts in the secret passage?” demanded his lordship, grasping each youngster firmly by the collar.
The children exchanged startled glances. “I didn’t tell!” Tom cried.
“Well, it certainly wasn’t me,” returned Vanessa.
“Despite what you may think, we adults were once children, too,” said Lord Bryn, depositing Tom to the front of the saddle and Vanessa to the rear. “I want none of your nonsense with your new governess, do you understand? Or there’ll be no pony at Christmas, Vanessa.”
“I promise,” she said at once.
Mounting carefully between them, Lord Bryn reflected grimly that Christmas was a long time off, and children’s memories were notoriously short.
They set out at a canter. Despite the long search that afternoon, King Arthur maintained a creditable pace, and the trio arrived at Brynwood in time to see a young woman descending from his lordship’s carriage.
“It’s her!” shrilled Tom. “Vanny, it’s our new governess.” His young voice carried a note of calculation, as if he were already probing for weaknesses.
And a wonderful sight we make, the marquis thought, glancing at the children’s berry-stained faces. He guided the horse into the drive and halted, taking a good look at his new employee.
Standish had described a female of three and thirty, but Bryn would have put her age at considerably less. Furthermore, his man of affairs had given him to believe the woman possessed a starchy air, but this chit seemed bewildered. Moreover, he noticed as he descended and lifted down the two delighted youngsters, the new governess had a squint. Was it vanity that prevented her wearing a glass? But what use had a governess for vanity?
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