by M C Beaton
All three gentlemen had started talking loudly again. Their conversation was, mercifully for Honey, in too broad a cant for her to understand, and only by the frequent salacious laughs could she judge it was definitely not for the ears of a young lady. Not wanting to attract attention to herself, Honey did not call for her usual glass of brandy but contented herself with asking for canary instead. The landlady brought the wine, removed the dishes, and retired.
There was a lot of whispering and giggling from the three men, and then one said, “I say, miss or madam, we’ve been laying bets as to your age, not being able to see nothing with that ’straordinary bonnet.”
Honey pretended to be deaf and studied a gruesome picture of a dead dog on the opposite wall. Under it ran the legend, “Died last night, poor Trust! Bad pay killed him.” This landlord, or the previous one, evidently wanted all his customers to understand he did not give credit.
Honey stiffened. There came the sound of chairs being scraped back. Then she relaxed. They were leaving.
But they stopped behind her chair.
Honey was just about to reach for her reticule, which was on the chair next to her, when a rough hand seized the poke of her bonnet and jerked the hat off her head. It was as well she had loosened the ribbons or she might have found herself dragged to the floor.
Three tipsy, weak faces stared down at Honey’s upturned one.
“Gad! What a little beauty,” said one with a face like a fox. “You should tell your mistress to give you better cast-offs, my maid.”
“Go about your business, fellow,” said Honey loftily, although she was trembling inside.
“‘Go about your business,’” mimicked the foxy-faced man.
“After we gets a kiss,” leered another. He had a pockmarked face and, horror of horrors, his teeth had been filed to points.
Honey made a dive for her reticule, but her arms were clipped to her sides by the foxy-faced man, who pulled her to her feet and swung her around to face the other two. “Take your pleasure, boys,” he said, “and then give me my chance.”
Honey screamed loud and long.
“Quick,” hissed Foxy Face, “before the landlord comes.”
Honey struggled and kicked, but to no avail. Pockmarked Face grabbed her by the chin, and grinned down at her, his horrible pointed teeth winking in the light. His mouth descended toward hers. Honey screwed her eyes shut and prayed for help.
There was a tremendous crash as the door of the coffee room was thrown open.
The pockmarked one drew back with a curse, but Foxy Face still held Honey in a firm grasp.
Honey opened her eyes and gulped.
Lord Alistair Stewart stood on the threshold. “Let her go,” he said mildly.
“There’s three o’ us,” cried Foxy Face. “Up and at ’im!”
He released Honey, who scrabbled for her reticule. There was an enormous thumping and crashing. Honey knocked her reticule to the floor in her haste and with a moan of dismay dived under the table after it. The strings had tied themselves into a knot, and when she finally got them undone, she had to tear out a steel mirror, a tortoiseshell comb, a clean handkerchief, a book, and a netted purse, before she could get at the pistol, which had got itself wedged at the very bottom.
At last she succeeded in getting it out, and leaped up from under the table with a cry of triumph.
She blinked in amazement. Lord Alistair was leaning lazily against the door jamb, surveying her with amusement.
“My dear Miss Honeyford,” he said. “This is the second time I find myself looking down the barrel of that pistol of yours and I find it unnerving to say the least.”
“M-my l’lord,” stammered Honey. “Those men! What happened?”
“They decided to lodge elsewhere.”
The rattle of wheels from the courtyard outside followed his words.
“But there was a fight,” said Honey.
“Yes, there was a little bit of a mill. It all happened while you were prudently hiding under the table.”
“I was not hiding. My reticule had fallen to the floor when I was searching for my pistol.” She retrieved the reticule and held it up.
His lordship raised his quizzing glass. “Dear me,” he said languidly. “What a very large reticule. It could carry a pig. Excellent if you ever take to poaching.”
“I made it myself,” said Honey. “I despise the frippery things ladies usually carry.”
“Ah, landlord,” said Lord Alistair to the unseen figure behind his back. “You may find me a clean chamber and direct my man there with my traps. When you return, I will be most interested to learn why this lady was left without protection in this room. Her screams could be heard from here to Rawson.”
“Oh, ah,” said the landlord, shuffling off.
“I am delighted to learn you have some feminine traits, Miss Honeyford,” said Lord Alistair, addressing himself to Honey again. “Your scream nearly lifted me out of the box of my carriage.”
“Of course I screamed,” said Honey. “I was shocked. I never would have dreamed that a lady could be attacked so in a public inn.”
“I do not think they took you for a lady. I think they were under the impression you were some sort of servant.”
He walked past her and picked up her bonnet. “Were you wearing this?”
“Yes,” said Honey, snatching it.
“There you are, then. Stands to reason they took you for a servant. I don’t think I have ever seen quite such a repellent bonnet in my life.”
“It was not repellent enough. Are you sure you are not hurt?”
“Yes, Miss Honeyford. Not a scratch.”
“Oh, I suppose the banging and thumping I heard was the chairs falling over,” said Honey, feeling disappointed, and wondering at the same time why she should feel disappointed.
“Chairs do make the most hideous racket,” he said, picking up three of them and placing them back against the table. The landlord appeared in the doorway.
“Ah, landlord,” said Lord Alistair. “Where am I?”
“In the Key,” said the landlord. “Miss is in the Moon.”
“So the moon is inhabited. That’s one wager I have lost. Now, my good fellow, explain why you did not rush to aid Miss when she screamed.”
“Wife says as ’ow she wus going to kill old pig at back. Same noise. Urr.”
Honey giggled nervously, and Lord Alistair looked at her severely.
“Fortunately, I have dined,” he said, “but bring us some brandy and port.”
“I was just going to bed,” said Honey.
“Nonsense. You may keep me company for a little.”
Honey sat down weakly.
“I am surprised you did not obtain rooms in Rawson,” she said. “Surely the crest on the panels of your carriage would have been enough.”
He sighed. “You fatigue me, Miss Honeyford, and you will bore many men unless you learn to curb your tongue and control your passions.”
“I am leaving,” said Honey, getting to her feet.
“Bravo! I wondered how much more you could take.”
Honey swept out and slammed the door behind her. Horrible, infuriating fop, she raged as she climbed the stairs to her room.
I was too hard, thought Lord Alistair. But I was only trying to be cruel to be kind. Such a babe is going to be hurt twenty times worse when she airs her views in London society.
But the room seemed dingy and empty without her. He had a picture of her wide, hurt, hazel eyes and her short chestnut curls standing up like an aureole about her head in the candlelight. He decided after long meditation that he had been unnecessarily rude. He would apologize to her in the morning.
When morning came, Lord Alistair found Honey had already left. His conscience bothered him. He had a desire to follow her. Then he shrugged. Miss Honeyford had a great deal of growing up to do, and any pursuit of her might appeal to her vanity and make her more outrageous than ever.
He noticed the mor
ning, like his mood, was gray and flat, as if the departure of the stormy Miss Honeyford had taken all the color out of the day.
Three
Honey and her servants were now anxious to reach London. They stopped for only a few hours sleep at the next two posting houses on the road south. Honey would have been glad to have driven all night and all day in order to avoid another stop, but the horses had to be changed and the coachman and grooms were weary.
They decided to pass the night at The George in Barnet before pressing on to Lady Canon’s in the West End of London in the morning.
By now Honey was used to grand posting houses and supercilious managers, and, after her stay at that terrible old coaching inn, The Boar’s Head, she welcomed even the haughtiest of treatment.
She was a little intimidated when she entered the dining room to find it full of very grand people. She was glad she had saved her one fine gown, a sea-green silk of rather old-fashioned cut, for this last stop. She had washed and brushed her curls till they shone, and, fortified with her favorite book, Vindication of the Rights of Women, she asked to be given a table in a quiet corner, relieved that these modern posting houses had done away with the large communal dining table.
The meal was excellent, the company totally uninterested in her, and Honey was just beginning to enjoy herself when one of the ladies at the other end of the room exclaimed, “Lord Alistair! Can we hope this means your return to Town? This Season is sadly flat and full of counter-skippers and Cits.”
“How sad,” came Lord Alistair’s amused voice. “I would have thought your presence, Mrs. Osborne, would have been society enough.”
Honey glanced across the room. Lord Alistair was joining a company of five richly dressed gentlemen and ladies at a table in front of the fire.
She lowered her eyes to her book again, but somehow she could not focus on the print. Everyone in the room seemed to be talking at once and so she could not hear what Lord Alistair was saying.
Six young men at a table near the window had been quarreling, not very loudly, but enough to cause an uneasy feeling in the room.
“Damn you, Giles!” yelled one, jumping to his feet and oversetting a chair. “I demand satisfaction. Name your seconds.”
“You are a card cheat and I stand by what I said, Jerry,” said the one called Giles. “Tom and Billy will act for me.”
“And Frank and Harry for me,” said Jerry.
An old gentleman wearing a bag wig said loudly, “If you gentlemen insist on trying to kill each other, then I beg you to quit this room while you make your arrangements. You are frightening the ladies.”
The six men rose from their seats, grumbling among themselves, and left the room. Everyone went on talking. Honey put down her book and sat amazed. Wasn’t anyone going to do anything? Then she decided they probably knew the duel would come to nothing, and the six men were probably all drinking in the tap right at this moment.
She looked more openly at Lord Alistair, who appeared to see her for the first time. He gave her a small bow from the waist and turned his attention back to Mrs. Osborne, a dashing matron with a high complexion and brown curls topped with an outrageous bonnet which looked like a Roman helmet.
Honey felt disconcerted. There were three fashionably dressed ladies at Lord Alistair’s table, including Mrs. Osborne. They all seemed to dote on him and hang on his every word. But, somehow, Honey had thought he would pay her a little more attention. Feeling rather piqued, she got to her feet to leave the room. She could not help stealing a glance at Lord Alistair to see whether he was watching her leave, but he carried on talking.
A disgracefully feminine thought flashed through her head. “I am wearing my best gown and he didn’t want to know me.”
She entered her room and stared sulkily around the magnificence of Barnet’s best posting house from the tasteful hangings to the framed landscapes and the Chippendale bureau and chairs.
Morosely, she undressed and went to bed. There was really nothing else to do.
Sleep came in fits and starts. Every time she decided she simply must get up instead of lying tossing and turning, she would plunge down into another fitful burst of sleep.
At last, she awoke properly at five o’clock in the morning. She decided to go for a short walk, got dressed, and opened the door of the old powder room which now served as a dressing room.
The one warm item she had was a sage-green cloak which had been her mother’s. Honey had never worn it, considering its large hood and sweeping folds unsuitable for the country. It was, in fact, the most fashionable-looking item she possessed, the other few clothes that she had being the product of an elderly spinster dressmaker in Kelidon whose only other customers were the elderly ladies of the town. She was just adjusting it around her shoulders when she realized she could hear perfectly plainly what the two men in the next room were saying.
“I say, Frank,” came a plaintive voice. “You don’t s’pose old Giles is capable of killing Jerry, do you?”
The one called Frank gave a great horse laugh. “Giles is a fine shot, but he won’t do any damage today. Fact is, Tom’s sick and tired of Giles’s moralizing and so he’s only going to pretend to load Giles’s pistol.”
“But what if Jerry kills Giles?”
“Good riddance,” came the laconic reply.
“Where do we meet?”
“The pasture on Hermitage Farm at a half past five. Just be getting light then. We’ve got time to walk there. Tom put it about that the duel was off. Don’t want any of the stuffed shirts alerting the authorities.”
Their voices faded as they walked to the door of their room.
Honey stood with her fists clenched. Something had to be done. She was well aware of the danger of interrupting six men at a duel in a lonely pasture at five-thirty in the morning. Somehow, she must stop them without their knowing who had been responsible. Two men in Kelidon, her father had told her, had once fought a duel over the old squire’s daughter. She had stopped the duel, and her ungrateful gallants had not only railed at her but had gone out of their way to make her life a misery from that day on. Gentlemen were very peculiar about duels, Sir Edmund had said.
Honey only briefly contemplated enlisting the help of her servants. A servant interfering in a gentlemen’s quarrel would have a sorry time of it.
There was, of course, Lord Alistair. But he would no doubt make nasty remarks about provincial schoolgirls leaping in where sensible members of the ton would know better than to tread.
Honey decided to find the pasture and then see if anything occurred to her. If Giles’s seconds had been both loyal to him, she would have gone up to him and pointed out that his pistol was not loaded. But the very fact that his pistol would not be loaded proved them disloyal, and she might find herself facing five angry men, Jerry and the four seconds.
She let herself quietly out of the inn. Gold-edged bars of cloud were lying along the eastern horizon. Willow warblers sent down their tiny cascades of song from the birch trees. Yellow wagtails darted for flies among the spring grass.
Dogtooth violets were thick on the banks at either side of the road outside the inn, and comma butterflies sunned themselves on the stone walls, their closed ragged-looking wings like dead leaves.
Lord Alistair closed the casement window of his room. Now, just where was Miss Honeyford off to? He finished dressing and was just adjusting a small diamond pin in his cravat when he suddenly thought, “Dammit! The duel! The hen-witted female is out to stop it.”
The duel was probably going to be held at that pasture at the Hermitage Farm which had become almost as famous a locality as Chalk Farm. Cursing Honey under his breath, he rushed down the steps and out of the inn door.
Meanwhile, Honey had reached the pasture, finding it by asking a countryman who was already out on the fields.
There was a thick windbreak of trees shielding the pasture from view. Honey climbed over the wall and made her way gingerly through the trees toward the sound
of voices.
She came to a halt behind a large scrubby bush, and, crouching down, she looked around it. The antagonists had already chosen their weapons and the seconds were loading the guns—or, in the case of Giles’s seconds, pretending to load.
Honey looked wildly up to the heavens, praying for a miracle. She saw a thick oak tree stretching its branches above her with one branch sticking well out over the field.
She crept back quietly to the base of the tree, and, taking off her hampering cloak, she folded it and laid it on the ground. Then, taking a deep breath, she began to climb, glad that she had left off her new corset. Nimbly she scaled the branches until she was stretched out on the branch over the field, hidden by the shifting and moving spring leaves.
Giles and Jerry now stood back to back. The handkerchief fluttered to the ground and they began to pace in opposite directions.
Honey remembered the games of “haunting” she had played with the children of the town on All Hallow’s Eve when she was little. “Giles!” she called in a high, eerie voice. “Thou hast false friends. There is no ball in thy pistol.”
Jerry’s head snapped around. Giles stopped, his mouth open.
“I say,” said Giles. “Did you hear that?”
“’Twas nothing,” said Jerry, but he had turned a muddy color with fright.
“It was the wind,” said Tom.
“No harm in seeing,” said Giles, looking about him strangely. He hefted the dueling pistol in his hand and then brought it down to the point. He frowned. “Doesn’t feel as if there’s a ball in it,” he murmured. “Balance is wrong.” He took off his hat and put it on the ground and fired the pistol into it. There was a flash, but when Giles picked up his hat and examined it, there was nothing to be seen but powder burns.
Very white in the face, Giles turned to face the others. “You murderers,” he said coldly. Jerry raised his pistol and pointed it straight at Giles. Honey stuffed her knuckles in her mouth to stop herself from screaming. Giles whipped a steel Scottish pistol with a rams-horn butt out of his pocket. “This is primed. You fool, Jerry. Did you think I meant to kill you? Was that why you all cheated? But I will now, if you make a move.”
