‘She gave both up for Lent and has become accustomed to doing without either,’ said Daphne. ‘I must retire,’ she added hurriedly, wishing to avoid lying about what Father had been doing on the Hopeworth road.
Diana followed her upstairs. ‘I wish you would speak on my behalf to Papa,’ she said.
Daphne turned, her hand on the bannister. ‘Why? Are you in love? Is there some gentleman?’
‘Pooh. Of course not. I wish to ride to hounds next time Papa goes hunting.’
‘But Diana,’ pleaded Daphne, her large eyes even larger in amazement. ‘You cannot! Only very coarse ladies go hunting.’
‘Stuff! I can ride better than Papa, I will have you know. But he will not listen to me. Please Daphne?’
Daphne slowly began to walk up the stairs. ‘I have not much influence with Papa,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Minerva …’
‘Minerva! Don’t talk fustian. Minerva would read me a sermon!’
‘But it is not very ladylike,’ persisted Daphne, walking into her bedroom. ‘You will soon wish to marry and you would not want the gentleman to have a disgust of you.
‘I don’t want to get married!’ said Diana fiercely. ‘I want to hunt and shoot and fish. ’Member what fun we used to have before you became so hoity-toity, Daphne. But you love clothes and dressing up and being bored by a lot of social chit-chat. Please Daphne.’
Daphne sat down on the bed and looked at Diana, her calm gaze revealing none of the busy thoughts underneath. Diana’s hair was worn behind her ears in a severe knot. Her mouth was rather large for beauty but her skin was flawless and her large, sparkling, black eyes gave her face a gypsy look which was oddly attractive.
All at once Daphne envied Diana who had confidence in herself and knew what she wanted. She, Daphne, had once run wild about the woods and fields. But that was before she had discovered her own beauty could save her such a great deal of pain. People did not say cutting or hurtful things if you were beautiful. They did not seem to expect you to say very much either. ‘I will try, Diana,’ she said slowly. ‘But give me a little time.’
Diana gave her a hug, nearly knocking her back across the bed.
After she had left, Daphne carefully began to prepare for bed. John Summer had deposited her trunks, and the maid, Betty, had already hung her dresses and mantles away. Her heavy iron cosmetic box had been placed on the toilet table. Daphne would allow no one to unpack these precious articles but herself. Carefully she began to take out each item and arrange them in order on the table. There were four different types of rouge – vegetable, serviette (to be applied with a cloth), Liquid Bloom of Roses, and cosmetic wool (treated with red dye).
Then there was a large bottle of Vento’s Italian Water; a box of face powder called Powder Pearl of India, and a large swansdown puff. There was cold cream, beautifying cream, Pomade de Nerole and Pomade de Graffa.
Daphne used very little of these cosmetics, but she collected them as a magpie collects glittering objects. After she had admired her collection, she removed the little rouge she had on her cheeks with cleansing cream. It was when she was twisting this way and that to try to unfasten the tapes at the back of her dress that she realized the maid, Betty, had not put in an appearance to help her for bed. Betty had been elevated to lady’s maid and a new parlourmaid called Sarah graced the vicarage. Although Betty had often acted as lady’s maid when the sisters went to London on visits, she had always had to resume her lower position when she returned to the vicarage. But her promotion had been the result of some only half-heard row that John Summer had had with the vicar. Betty never seemed happy these days, thought Daphne, and she had never married John either, although at one point shortly after Deirdre’s wedding, they had received Mr Armitage’s blessing.
The vicar was still rather mean when it came to the number of servants he employed. John Summer still acted as groom, coachman, kennel master, and whipper-in. The knife boy was still the pot boy as well as the page, and Sarah, the new housemaid, doubled as parlourmaid when the occasion demanded. There was a cook-housekeeper, Mrs Hammer, who held sway in the kitchen, and an odd-man who donned butler’s livery if the guests were very grand.
Betty had been in London when the eldest Armitage girl, Minerva, had made her come-out, and had subsequently returned with the next in line, Annabelle, and had been there when Deirdre had been wed. She had been happy and cheerful, cheeky and frightened by turns, and after Deirdre’s wedding had shown signs of settling down to marry John Summer and live happily ever after.
Then she had become ill and had been ill for quite some time – so ill that Mr Armitage had sent her away to the seaside in the hope that the fresh air of the ocean would cure her.
The visit seemed to have effected a physical cure but had done nothing to improve the maid’s spirits. Betty had become surly and sad and no longer begged the girls’ old dresses or tied pretty ribbons in her black curls.
‘I must not worry so much,’ thought Daphne, as she at last pulled a printed cotton nightgown over her head and slipped between the sheets. ‘I will have wrinkles if I worry overmuch.
‘But I do hope the bishop does not come!’
Daphne, despite her worries, fell asleep very quickly. She had not thought of Mr Archer once.
The sun shone bravely in Daphne’s bedroom window at six in the morning. She awoke and blinked and then buried her face in the pillow and tried to go back to sleep. But a picture of the Bishop of Berham breaking his neck rose before her eyes to be followed by a picture of her father being hanged in front of Newgate Prison.
Daphne wondered whether to wake Diana and enlist her help. But Diana was her younger sister and must be shielded from harm.
It would not be so very bad, thought Daphne, if she dressed and walked to where the pit was so carefully concealed in the road and shouted a warning should the bishop’s carriage appear.
Papa had said something about the bishop arriving early in the morning.
When Daphne let herself quietly out of the house a half-hour later, she did not look like the usual fashion plate she presented to the world. Her hair was brushed back behind her ears and confined at the nape of her neck with a pink ribbon. She wore serviceable boots under a drab gown of brown cotton.
The summer morning was sweet and still. Birds chirped sleepily in the hedgerows. A hazy mist was rising from the fields like a gauze curtain at the pantomime before the transformation scene. A few threads of smoke climbed from cottage chimneys into the lazy air. Daphne hurried along the edge of the village pond and along past the tall gates of The Hall where her uncle, Sir Edwin Armitage, lived with his chilly wife and two plain daughters. The road wound over the River Blyne. The river gurgled and chuckled over smooth round stones and between tall banks of rushes, the only busy thing in that early morning’s peace.
On past the blind shuttered windows of Lady Wentwater’s mansion went Daphne. Lady Wentwater had not been in residence for over two years and her nephew Guy who had once been a slave-trader was rumoured to have gone to America. Rumour also had it that Sir Edwin’s daughter, Emily, was still waiting for his return.
Daphne came out of the shade of the trees which surrounded Lady Wentwater’s mansion and looked down the long ribbon of road which led towards the crossroads.
Her heart seemed to stop.
A light carriage was upended in the vicar’s pit and a still figure was lying beside the road. The horses had climbed free and were standing nearby.
Daphne picked up her skirts and ran as fast as she could towards the prone figure. Once again, in her mind’s eye, she could see her father dancing on the end of a rope.
The figure resolved itself into that of a man, a large man. He was bespattered with mud and water from head to foot. His face was covered in mud.
Daphne knelt down beside him and gently took his head on her lap. ‘Don’t be dead,’ she whispered. ‘Please say something.’
A large tear rolled down Daphne’s nose and plopped onto the
mud-covered face on her lap.
‘My lord bishop,’ said Daphne, praying aloud. ‘It was a most wicked thing to do. Only say that you are alive so that you may forgive us.’
The man’s eyes opened suddenly and he stared straight up into Daphne’s face.
‘Thank God!’ sobbed Daphne, taking out a dainty, scented handkerchief and trying to scrub some of the mud from his face. The man struggled to sit up and Daphne knelt back on her heels and stared at him anxiously.
Her dusky curls had escaped from their ribbon and were tumbling about her face. Her enormous eyes were dark and beseeching.
‘Please give me your blessing,’ she said.
‘Certainly,’ said the man in a dazed way. He studied her face for a few moments and then began to smile, his teeth very white against the smeared mud on his face.
He leaned forward and neatly clipped Daphne about the waist, and, before she could even begin to think what he meant to do, he had pulled her into his arms and ruthlessly kissed her. Daphne struggled, filled with fear; fear of the strange heat flooding her body, of the masculine strength of his arms, of the faint bristle of his chin against her face.
When he released her, she jumped to her feet, scrubbing her mouth with the sleeve of her dress.
He staggered unsteadily to his feet and gazed down at her.
Daphne took a deep breath. ‘How dare …’
But shock and outrage stifled the rest of the exclamation. She received a smart slap across her bottom.
‘Run along,’ said the muddy gentleman, ‘and get some help.’
Daphne opened and shut her mouth, anger robbing her momentarily of speech.
At last she found her voice. ‘You, my lord bishop, are an insult to the cloth.’
‘Inbreeding,’ murmured the gentleman. ‘No,’ he said in a kind voice. ‘I am not a bishop. Bishops are a very rare breed. You must not keep thinking every gentleman you meet is a bishop, you know.’
‘But you must be the bishop!’ wailed Daphne. ‘My father, the vicar, dug this pit especially to trap him!’
The tall gentleman looked down at her, his yellowish eyes filled with pity. ‘There, there, my child,’ he said. ‘I shall manage for myself.’
He began to walk off down the road in the direction of Hopeworth. ‘A tragedy,’ he thought. ‘Such a beautiful girl. She should not be allowed to wander about the countryside without some sort of keeper.’
A patter of light steps behind him made him turn round. ‘Oh, sir,’ gasped Daphne. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Garfield, Simon Garfield at your service.’
‘Well, Mr Garfield, you must listen. You see I would like to help you but the bishop may come along at any moment and I must warn him …’
‘Very well, my child,’ said Mr Garfield. ‘You stay here and … er … warn the bishop.’ His horses had broken their traces and miraculously plunged free of the ditch. He had tethered them to a tree and left them to graze in the long grass at the side of the road.
He strode off, leaving Daphne twisting her hands in agitation.
Mr Garfield quickly made his way towards Hopeworth. His head throbbed and the bright sunlight hurt his eyes. He silently cursed his friend, Edwin Apsley, whose idea it had been that he should call on a certain Mr Armitage and buy a couple of hounds. Mr Garfield had been staying with friends on the other side of Hopeminster. Edwin had been with him but had had to rush off to town to stop his latest inamorata from leaving his protection and had hurriedly begged Mr Garfield to oblige him in the matter of the hounds.
‘Who is this fellow Armitage?’ Mr Garfield had asked. ‘How shall I find him?’
‘Oh, just ask in Hopeworth village,’ Edwin had said carelessly. ‘Everyone knows him.’
Mr Garfield decided to find the residence of this Mr Armitage and demand help to raise his carriage from the hole in the road.
He puzzled momentarily over the plight of the poor mad Ophelia who had tried to come to his rescue. Her voice did not have a country burr, but her clothes were old and unfashionable. Poor demented thing. He would never have kissed her had he guessed she had several rooms to let in her pretty head.
He paused outside the gates of Lady Wentwater’s mansion, but it was all too clearly deserted. He sighed and went on further, past the River Blyne. On the other side of the bridge, he saw the squat figure of a lady rapidly approaching. She was wearing a large muslin cap which imperfectly concealed a head of curl papers. She was in her undress: a negligee over an elaborate petticoat. Mr Garfield saw with a sinking heart that she appeared to be talking to herself. He decided to ignore her and go on and see if he could find some sane person in this mad world. He began to wonder if the blow to his head had affected his wits.
But as he came abreast of the lady, she stopped him and said, ‘I never was more shocked when Betty told me. Tigers and panters and leapinghards, yes, I says, but not bishops. Charles is gone out and no one else is awake and she’s no use, her with her Spasms. It’s her way of not facing up to things. Now if I had had Spasms every day of my life like she does, I would not be what I am today.’
Mr Garfield smiled in a placating sort of way and made to move on, but Lady Godolphin, for it was she, much flustered and worried having heard confirmation of the vicar’s bishop trap from the maid, caught hold of his sleeve.
‘Now you look like a gentleman,’ said Lady Godolphin earnestly, peering up into Mr Garfield’s face, ‘albeit a muddy one. Would you do such a thing? For when he told me last night, I thought it was all a hum and he meant it for drainage. For when I thought about it, I thought I could not have heard aright. Not till Betty come in with the tea and says, “You’ll never guess what master has been and done.”
“‘Betty,” says I, “he was maundering on about some such thing and made me walk from the carriage so that my feet still ache, and my Arthur’s Eitis is so awful I feel like that boy with the foxes gnawing at his vitality, but mark my words, he was funning.” “Not he,” says Betty to me. “In dead earnest is t’master.”’
Lady Godolphin paused for breath. Mr Garfield made a strange strangled sound in the back of his throat, pulled his arm free, and hastened off down the road.
He began to feel more ill and more dizzy than he had done when he had recovered consciousness.
There were some women at the well on the village green. In a faltering voice, he asked for Mr Armitage’s direction, and following the pointing fingers, he stumbled on.
The vicar was in high alt. John Summer, who had been posted at the Hopeworth–Hopeminster crossroads for most of the night, had come back in the very early hours to report that he had stopped a messenger from the bishop with a note to say his lordship was indisposed. Unfortunately, John Summer had ridden away from the crossroads a bare half-hour before Mr Garfield had made his appearance.
It was just beginning to strike Mr Armitage that he had not considered the possibility of any other traveller falling victim to his trap. He decided to make his way along to the pit and call the workmen to fill it in as soon as possible.
As he swung open the iron gates of the vicarage, he became aware of a tall, muddy figure, swaying slightly in the middle of the lane.
‘See here,’ said the vicar sternly, advancing on Mr Garfield. ‘We all take a toss, but from the look of you, you have no one to blame but yourself. Never ride when you’re dead drunk.’
‘Oh God in Heaven,’ said Mr Garfield weakly. ‘I am in Bedlam.’
With that, he put his hand to his brow and collapsed unconscious at the feet of the startled vicar.
TWO
Lady Godolphin hurried on until she met Daphne who was sitting disconsolately beside the pit, the carriage wreck, and the two horses.
‘Lud!’ said Lady Godolphin, putting her hand to her heart. ‘Never tell me the bishop’s down in there.’
‘No, Lady Godolphin,’ said Daphne. ‘But someone did have an accident. A very tall man. He … he … was unconscious and I thought he was dead and … and
… I thought it was the bishop and asked for his blessing and he kissed me.’
‘Now, now,’ said Lady Godolphin, putting a fat arm around Daphne’s shoulders. ‘You’re all overwritten. You must not mind. That must have been the gentleman I met a little way back. He was most odd and rude in his manner, and yet I have a feeling I have seen him somewhere before. What on earth made your father think of such a thing? I really thought he was joking. It’s all that religion. It do turn a body’s head so.’
‘I do not think Papa suffers from an excess of religion,’ said Daphne, mopping her streaming eyes with her now muddy handkerchief and getting streaks of mud on her face.
‘Speak of the devil,’ said Lady Godolphin cheerfully. ‘Unless I am much mistaken, here comes your pa now.’
A squat figure on horseback was riding hell-for-leather towards them, sending up a cloud of white dust into the morning air.
The vicar reined in. ‘John and some of the lads will be along in a minute to fill that in,’ he said. ‘Bishop’s not coming. He’s got the gout. “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise …” St Paul. Or in other words, his lordship might not have got the gout if he had not been so clutch-fisted with that port of his. Not that good port is a foolish thing; it’s only foolish when you drink all of it yourself and offer your guests indifferent canary.’
‘But Papa,’ wailed Daphne. ‘Someone did fall into your trap. A strange gentleman.’
‘Oh, lor’,’ said the vicar dismally. ‘I thought he was foxed. He’s stretched out in the boys’ room with cold cloths on his head. Best get the doctor to bleed him. I told Betty to leave him be to sleep it off. Kept opening his eyes, looking at me, saying “Oh, no,” and collapsing again. I think he’s touched in his upper works.’
‘More like to have damaged his brain box in that silly trap of yours,’ said Lady Godolphin. ‘Hark’ee, Charles, you’d best hope he recovers or he’ll have a mess of relatives along here sueing the life out of you.’
Daphne Page 2
