by Carola Dunn
"A guinea! Nay, a shilling's plenty for yon skellum."
"Give him half a crown, at least if the horses look strong.” She dived back into her reticule and produced the requisite coin.
"A waste o’ good siller,” he muttered, but when the new pair was harnessed and a new postilion mounted, he gave the half crown to the ostler before climbing back into the carriage.
"Ta, guv,” said the man, with a nod and a wink to the postilion.
As they clattered out of the yard, Penny hoped the nod and wink signified a good tip and would bring them better service along the way. Certainly they were moving faster now, the chariot squeaking and groaning in reproach.
In her corner, Mrs. Ratchett snored on.
Faster was a relative term. Penny managed to drowse through Potters Bar, Hatfield, and Welwyn but she was dismayed to discover, when she roused fully, that the eastern sky was paling. Dawn already, and they had not yet reached Stevenage, their next stage. Perhaps they would speed up now it was growing light.
Daylight would bring other problems. Physical necessity was going to compel her to go into the inn at Stevenage. She'd be seen, and she was too used to the way people noticed her height and her red hair to hope that she might not be remembered. They were still much too close to London for comfort. Even if Uncle Vaughn didn't guess which way she was heading, he could well make enquiries this far out of Town.
At least she would try to persuade Angus to hire decent cattle without her interference, so as not to give the ostlers any particular reason to look at her.
Apparently sleeping peacefully, he was sprawled on the opposite seat, his short-cropped sandy hair ruffled. She felt a sudden rush of affection for him; whatever his faults he was the most noble and disinterested of men and she intended to be a good wife to him. However, her immediate aim was to awake him from his well-deserved slumbers, if possible without doing anything so obvious as shaking him.
She coughed. No response. Coughing again, louder, she ventured to tug on his sleeve, quickly snatching her hand back as he stirred.
"Angus,” she said plaintively, “are you asleep?"
He hoisted himself upright, blinking, and smoothed his hair. “I was dozing."
"I'm sorry. You moved and I thought you had woken up."
"No matter. Where are we?” He peered through the grimy window at a hedgerow entwined with silvery old man's beard.
"Surely we must be near Stevenage by now, we have been driving for ever. You will ask for the best horses, will you not, Angus? And pay extra for them if need be?"
"Yes, yes, my dear. I was maybe a wee bit hasty with you last night—after all, ‘tis your money you are spending. Yesterday was a difficult day altogether. We doctors must go when we're needed, you understand. We cannot choose our hours to suit, and I was lucky to find Dr. Barnes to take my patients while I am gone these few days."
"When we are married, it will be your money, too. You shall have an assistant and a proper clinic where your patients can come to you if they are well enough."
"I trust you do not think I would marry you for your fortune, Penelope,” he said with a worried frown.
"Of course not, or I should not be here with you. You are marrying me to save me from a dreadful fate.” She decided it was time to change the subject. “What posting house are we to stop at in Stevenage?"
"I told the post-boy to go to the Grange, though there's little to choose between it and the Yorkshire Grey, both being large and busy."
Penny bit her lip. “Are we not more likely to be found at a popular inn?” she asked tentatively. He had woken in a good humour and she was unwilling to vex him.
"I considered going to the Roebuck Inn, a mile or so south of the town and therefore less frequented. But then it struck me that we shall be less conspicuous in a crowd, for the short time we shall be there. When we stop for a meal or for the night it may be preferable to find out-of-the-way places where your uncle is less likely to seek us out."
"Oh yes, that makes sense,” she said in relief. “I daresay the larger inns will have a better choice of horses, too."
"Undoubtedly,” he agreed with a sympathetic smile.
A few minutes later Penny saw the Roebuck Inn. Soon the chariot clattered past the first few cottages of Stevenage, past the Red Lion, and along the wide High Street, lined with chestnuts and limes.
Although the sun had not yet risen, a mail coach was already standing before the Grange, an early Georgian building with a long brick façade sporting a multitude of bay windows. Nothing was allowed to delay the mail. Ostlers sped to change the team while the guard and coachman downed mugs of ale without leaving their vehicle. Waiters swarmed about the arriving passengers; porters rushed to load and unload luggage; departing passengers scrambled to find seats inside or on the roof. In such confusion, Penny realized, they might well go unnoticed.
As the chariot pulled up behind the mail, Mrs. Ratchett grunted and opened her eyes. By the light of day, she was revealed as a stout elderly woman, dressed in black bombazine, with a tiny nose and pursed mouth too small for her large, pale, double-chinned face.
"'The sleep of a labouring man is sweet,'” she announced, and closed her eyes again. The steady snoring at once resumed.
Penny giggled. “That's the second thing she has said to me,” she told Angus, “and the first was also a quotation from the Bible."
He obviously failed to comprehend her amusement. “Mrs. Ratchett was housekeeper to a clergyman,” he explained, opening the door and stepping down from the carriage.
"Wait, I'm coming, too. I need to ... er..."
He helped her out without further elucidation. At least as a doctor he was conversant with the biological necessities!
"Do you wish Mrs. Ratchett to accompany you?” he asked solicitously.
"I should not dream of disturbing the sweet sleep of a labouring woman.” With an effort she kept her face straight. “I believe I can manage without her.” In the early-morning chill she was glad of the warmth of her bronze-green merino pelisse. She hurried into the inn.
When she returned to the chariot, a pair of sturdy bays had been harnessed and the new postilion, in his short yellow coat and top hat, was waiting impatiently. Grinning, he saluted her.
"Ge'mun says ye're in a hurry, miss."
"Yes. Please go as fast as you can."
"'Tes an easy stage. I'll spring ‘em,” he promised. Pulling out of the inn yard they gave way to an arriving vehicle with a team of four, a smart travelling carriage, maroon picked out in gold. As it swept past, Penny recognized a face at the window, blond ringlets beneath a stylish straw bonnet garlanded with blue silk flowers—Henrietta White.
So Henrietta and her lover were also driving north. They could be on the way to Gretna Green, but they might equally well be going to take shelter with some friend or relative. Meeting him in the garden, Penny had assumed the gentleman to be a fortune-hunter, for Henrietta's father was enormously wealthy. However, the elegant carriage suggested that Henrietta's suitor stood in no great need of funds. He must be deeply in love.
She wondered what Mr. White's objection to him could be, that forced the pair to elope. Henrietta was more than capable of twisting her father round her dainty little finger, so the gentleman's flaw must be serious. Perhaps he was a libertine. He was gallant and charming, surely prime requisites for success with women.
Penny resolved to watch out for the maroon carriage along the way. It would add interest to what promised to be a long and tedious journey.
Angus had once more composed himself for sleep, oblivious of Mrs. Ratchett's snores and the rattles and screeches of the road-shaken chariot. Penny had grown used to the noises and scarcely noticed them, but she was too wide awake to sleep. Hanging on to the strap—the postilion had taken her at her word and was speeding down the highway—she watched the hedges slip by, bright with red campion and yarrow and a mass of tall yellow ragwort.
She wished there were time to walk in the fi
elds she saw through the five-barred gates along the way. Going to school in a rural village had taught her to love the countryside and she had missed it during the years in London since then. There had been occasional outings until Papa died, but she had been limited to city streets since her aunt and uncle had moved into the house in Russell Square.
Leaning forward, she silently urged the horses on.
The chariot slowed a trifle as they entered a village, but it was still moving at a fair pace when it swung round a corner. Mrs. Ratchett swayed forward. About to land on the floor, she saved herself just in time by grabbing the strap.
"Mercy me!” she squawked, then fixed Penny with a disapproving eye. “'The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.’”
Penny sternly stifled a snort of laughter. Angus, pressed into his corner by the swerve, half woke, then drifted off again.
"There's gentlemen can sleep through anything,” said Mrs. Ratchett tolerantly in her high, breathless voice. “The Reverend Jones, now, as I was housekeeper to, he could of slep’ through one of his own sermons if he hadn't to stand up to deliver ‘em, and so I told him."
She proceeded to regale Penny with her life history, a tale of singular dullness enlivened by quotations from the gloomier Old Testament prophets.
"And then the reverend up and went to his reward,” she said at last. “'He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more.’ So I went to live with my brother. Tom's a baker in Cheapside. ‘Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die.'” She patted her enormous belly complacently.
"'Man shall not live by bread alone,'” Penny suggested.
"No, nor woman neither. I've got a sister married to a butcher and a cousin as is a grocer. We'll be stopping at the next post house for breakfast, I make no doubt? I'm getting downright peckish."
Despite her constant sense of urgency. Penny had to admit that she was somewhat peckish, too.
The rumble of the carriage wheels on the cobbles of Biggleswade's market square roused Angus. It was market day, and though the hour was still early, already stalls were being set up. The chariot threaded its way between carts loaded with sacks of carrots, potatoes, and peas, crates of runner beans, baskets of vegetable marrows, punnets of red currants and bunches of parsley.
They turned in at the White Hart, a low, timber-framed building older and less fashionable than its modem rival across the square, the Crown. Angus pulled out his steel-cased watch and consulted it.
"Fifteen mile in not much more than an hour and a half,” he said with satisfaction, as though it had been his idea to hire decent horses and tell the post-boy to spring them.
Penny was tempted to hire a private parlour, but she was afraid it would mean a battle with Angus over her extravagance. Though they would be easier to find in the coffee room, Uncle Vaughn was surely not yet on their trail. He was not even due home from his business in Hampshire until tonight. She postponed the battle.
The coffee room, its low beams blackened by centuries of smoke, was full of local farmers and London dealers come down to buy produce for Covent Garden market. A harassed waiter cleared a table for them in a corner near the door. Penny sat with her back to the wall and a clear view of the door; not that she thought it would do her any good, but at least she wouldn't be taken by surprise.
Sitting still made her nervous. She wished they were back on the road, putting miles between them and London. Her appetite had deserted her, and when the waiter asked for her order, she requested tea and a toasted muffin with marmalade.
"You must eat something more sustaining, Penelope,” Angus advised kindly. “There is a long journey ahead of us."
"Two rashers of bacon,” she added.
"I'll have the same,” Mrs. Ratchett decided, “but make it three rashers, and a broiled kidney, two boiled eggs—three-minute eggs, mind!—with bread and butter, and if you've got some good kippers, bring me a pair. And a pint of porter to wash it down.” Her chair creaked as she leaned back and folded her plump hands in her vast lap, her little eyes bright with anticipation.
"A dish of porridge,” said Angus, “and a glass of ale."
"Ought you not to eat something more sustaining?” Penny asked, half teasing, half concerned that he was stinting himself because of her chaperon's large and doubtless expensive order.
"Porridge is the most sustaining food in existence,” he informed her.
In spite of the crowd, their breakfasts arrived quickly. Penny was finished with hers in ten minutes. She sat sipping tea in an agony of impatience while Mrs. Ratchett chewed endlessly at her mountain of food and Angus called for a second helping.
"Not bad for a Sassenach cook,” he commented. “'Tis well seasoned and properly soaked overnight, not thrown together in an hour or less."
"I daresay there are many Scots travelling the Great North Road,” said Penny, and added, “If you will excuse me, I should like to take a little exercise."
"I cannot think it wise, my dear, not on your own. The town is crowded this morning."
"I just want to wander about the market for a few minutes."
"'If sinners entice thee, consent thou not,'” said Mrs. Ratchett, cracking the top of her second egg with a teaspoon. “They're a rough lot, miss, them from Covent Garden."
"I shall stroll with you in the yard while the horses are hitched up,” Angus promised.
Penny might have gone anyway had she not been trapped between Mrs. Ratchett and the wall. Apart from wanting to stretch her limbs, she would have liked to see the market. The men in the coffee room were calling for their reckonings and departing. She was sure there was a lively scene outside.
Sighing, she gave up hope of seeing it except in passing.
At last Mrs. Ratchett took her last mouthful of muffin, concealed a discreet belch in her napkin, arid reached for her tankard of porter, already mostly vanished into the unfathomable depths. Angus finished off his ale. Penny was about to rise before either could order anything else when a striking couple entered the room.
Henrietta, exquisite as always in a pale blue carriage dress, was looking up archly at her escort. At him Penny frankly stared. So that was the man who had saved her from a nasty fall. He was dark, decidedly handsome but with a sardonic look; his hair cut in a fashionable Brutus. His clothes, though unobtrusive, were elegant. A superbly fitted dark blue coat, a cravat of moderate height, neat despite his journeying, fawn waistcoat, buckskins and glossy Hessians clad a form not tall but well-proportioned. That he was no weakling Penny knew from experience.
Altogether his appearance was unexceptional, yet somehow he had a dashing, almost reckless air which she was sure would always make him stand out in a crowd.
Noting her interested gaze, the gentleman bowed to her with a faintly mocking smile. Henrietta turned and saw her. An expression of alarm crossed her pretty, heart-shaped face. She rushed across to their corner table.
"Penny, pray say you will not tell Papa you have seen me!” she begged, her blue eyes wide with entreaty. “I am eloping, you see. Promise you will not give me away!"
Try as she might, Penny could not contain her merriment. “I won't,” she gasped through her laughter. “I promise."
Henrietta looked offended. “I cannot guess what you find so funny, I vow."
"Why, I am eloping, too."
"You?” Henrietta looked her up and down in astonishment. “But who...?” She turned her gaze on Angus, who had risen at her approach.
"Pray permit me to present Dr. Knox,” said Penny formally, enjoying herself. “Angus, this is Miss Henrietta White, a near neighbour of mine.
"How do you do, ma'am,” he said, bowing.
The gentleman had followed Henrietta at a more dignified pace. Over her head, Penny met his dark eyes and saw that he shared her amusement at the situation. That nearly set her off again.
"Henrietta, will you not introduce us to your ... er ... friend?” she asked in a somewhat unsteady voice.
"To Jason?” Glancing back at him, she said doubtfully, “I suppose so. Jason, this is Penny—Penelope—Bryant. Jason is Lord Kilmore, Penny. He's a baron."
"My lord.” Doing her best to hide her surprise that Henrietta had caught a nobleman, Penny struggled to her feet. It was impossible to curtsy in the confined space.
"Miss Bryant, I am delighted to make your acquaintance,” he said smoothly, but with such meaning in his voice that she knew he recognized her.
She smiled at him, grateful for his discretion in not revealing their previous meeting, where she had made such a cake of herself. “My lord, may I make known to you Dr. Angus Knox—though we are travelling as Mr. and Miss Cox,” she added, remembering suddenly.
The men nodded to each other. To dispel his lordship's bored look, Penny added grandly, “And my dame de compagnie, Mrs. Ratchett, who is playing the part of my aunt."
"Now, miss, there's no call to interduce me. I knows my place, I'm sure. Nor I don't hold with swearing. ‘Keep thy tongue from evil,’ says I."
"Swearing?” Penny was puzzled.
"Damn de compagnie,” murmured his lordship, stressing the first word. “I believe Miss Bryant-Cox was speaking French, ma'am."
"Oh, well if it's French, now, I'm sure there can't be no objection, my lord,” said Mrs. Ratchett amicably.
Penny avoided catching the baron's eye. He might have the savoir-faire to hide his mirth, but she knew that once again she would have to laugh.
CHAPTER THREE
"My, his lordship were that condescending,” marvelled Mrs. Ratchett, heaving herself into the rocking chariot. “Fancy him asking to join us at table! ‘The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb.’ What a pity you was in such a rush to leave, miss."
"We have been here for near an hour,” Penny pointed out irritably. Returning anxiety had quashed her merriment. One more quotation, she thought, and she was going to give the woman a sharp set-down.
Angus climbed in. As the carriage began to move, he said, “I told the boy to stop at St. Neots. It is only ten miles, but Huntingdon is not much less than twenty and fresh horses will more than make up the time lost in stopping. I trust you approve, my dear?"
