Ginny

by M C Beaton

  Lord Gerald realized they must present a very odd picture indeed. Ginny was wearing a ridiculously thin silk dress, cut low on the bosom and embellished with a fine rope of pearls. She had planned to arrive at Courtney at dinner time, and since the weather in Bolton had been relatively warm she had cheerfully assumed it would be much warmer in the more southern part of England, and had worn her dinner gown under a warm herringbone-tweed cape for the journey. But now her cape was lying in that strange carriage along with her hat and her trunks, and the Kentish weather seemed all set to rival that of the North Pole. Lord Gerald was in full evening dress, complete with white tie and tails, frilled shirt, and diamond studs. He knew he looked at his best in evening dress and found to his irritation that he was hoping Ginny thought so, too.

  There was a clatter on the stairs and the door opened to reveal Mr. Figgs, coughing horribly and carrying an armful of rugs and quilts.

  “Here you are, my lord,” he said. “Best keep yourselves warm. I dunno when I last saw a night like this and I’ve seen some. Begging your pardon, my lord,” he lowered his voice, “the whatsit’s out in the garden at back and if you or Mum were desirous to use the conveniences, you’d best do it now afore the snow gets too deep. I only ’as me own chamber pot, so…”

  “Quite,” said Gerald hurriedly and then realized the landlord had said snow.

  “Snow!” he cried. He ran to the door and slid back the bolts.

  A white hell roared outside. He found he was looking out at what appeared to be a moving wall of snow. He shut and bolted the door with a bang.

  “That’s that,” he said bitterly. “No one’s going anywhere tonight. Oh, God!”

  He marched back to the fire and slumped down on the settle. Mr. Figgs regarded him with a kind of gloomy relish and then, dropping his bundle of wraps, coughed his way back up the stairs again.

  Ginny sat silently, looking at the flames.

  “Does nothing ever upset you?” snapped Gerald at last. “I don’t know how long we’re going to be stuck in this inn and heaven knows what will happen to our reputations.”

  “I can’t see what good it does making a fuss about something that can’t be helped,” said Ginny. “We must just make the best of it. Did your servants expect you home?”

  “No,” said Gerald. “They will think I am staying at my club.”

  “And since only my would-be assailant received my telegram,” said Ginny, “no one will know I have passed the night with you… except of course the police.”

  “I have no intentions of marrying you,” said Lord Gerald, instantly regretting it, for Ginny was looking at him from under raised eyebrows in a way that made him feel like an impertinent schoolboy.

  “I wouldn’t have you,” said Ginny in a vague sort of way. “After breaking my heart over Peter Paster, I have no intention of becoming emotionally involved with anyone. And now, my lord, if I think I heard our landlord’s mutterings aright, the geography of the house is situated in the backyard. Please excuse me.”

  Lord Gerald got to his feet and made her a chilly bow. Ginny picked up his coat and wrapped it around herself. She walked off into the kitchen. He could hear the sound of bolts being drawn back and then a faint exclamation of dismay.

  He got to his feet and strode into the kitchen to find Ginny standing on the threshold of the kitchen door, staring in blank dismay at the howling, raging storm. It was impossible to see more than a few inches into the garden.

  “Let me find a lamp,” he said. “I had better escort you, and to hell with the proprieties.”

  “Thank you,” said Ginny faintly. “I do not think I would like to die of exposure in such circumstances.”

  Lord Gerald found and lit a hurricane lamp. Then he took down an ancient oilskin from the back of the kitchen door and threw it around his shoulders and, taking Ginny’s arm, they both ventured cautiously into the storm. Although they could not see the “convenience,” they were able to smell it after they had taken several steps along what they hoped was the garden path.

  Lord Gerald swung the lantern and a tall, thin hut came into view.

  “Excelsior!” cried Ginny.

  Both were frozen to the bone by the time they returned to the inn parlor and fled shivering to the fire. After he had warmed himself Gerald went to the bar to rummage for ingredients to make a fresh bowl of punch—the old one having become cold—and Ginny braved the kitchen, with its attendant black beetles, to fill a kettle that she presently returned and hung on a hook and chain over the fire.

  “I wonder if Mr. Figgs has ever heard of a gas cooker?” she said. “Or even a nice little wood-burning stove. I believe they must do all their cooking over the open fire.”

  Lord Gerald came back with an armful of bottles. He looked very stern and remote with the expression of his black eyes hidden under their heavy lids. They both sat quietly, waiting for the kettle to boil. Ginny appeared to have resigned herself to her situation, but Gerald sat watching her face with a brooding expression on his own. He was going to have to watch very, very carefully or Miss Bloggs would be making one of her cracks about romance, and the next thing he knew he would be hugging and kissing her, and then after that he would be up at the altar. And not because Ginny loved him but because—he was sure—she enjoyed irritating him.

  The kettle began to sing on the hearth and he deftly mixed the punch, giving it all his attention.

  “I wonder where we should sleep?” said Ginny, seemingly oblivious of the suspicious look she was receiving from his lordship.

  “These settles are much too short. Perhaps if we drew back the table and spread the quilts and things on the floor, we could both sleep in front of the fire.”

  “No!” shouted Gerald, and then added more quietly, “I shall be perfectly comfortable where I am.”

  Ginny gave him the benefit of her most empty stare and relapsed into silence. She was wishing there was some way she could remove her stays, which were digging uncomfortably into the soft flesh under her armpits. Lord Gerald was wishing he could unfasten his collar and take off his boiled shirt. Both decided to wait until the other fell asleep.

  The punch was very heady and after a while gave both a false energy and feeling of well-being. Gerald found himself forgetting all his suspicions and dislike of Ginny and thinking she was quite a good sort of girl, after all, and Ginny… well, one never knew exactly what Ginny was thinking. She suddenly began to discuss a problem she had. A greedy tenant farmer was taking the heart right out of the land and she wished to know how to get rid of him, or at least how to make him see sense.

  And Gerald, who loved the land more deeply than he ever realized, plunged into a long agricultural lecture fired by Ginny’s absorbed attention, while the punch sank lower in the bowl and the snow hissed and whispered around the old inn.

  His feelings grew warmer and warmer toward Ginny. She looked deuced pretty, sitting there in that flimsy silk gown of rose-pink. She had great shadows under her eyes and her face was thinner than he had remembered.

  “Have you lost weight?” he asked abruptly.

  “Oh, lots and lots,” sighed Ginny.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Worry, or something. I’ve been worried for quite some time about who at Courtney is trying to kill me.”

  Gerald looked at her in amazement. “But you do not think it is as serious as that? You said yourself it might be a practical joke.”

  “I never really believed that, Gerald,” said Ginny, unconsciously using his christian name. “I’ll tell you why. I love Courtney and I’m sensitive to the atmosphere of the house, in the same way as one is sensitive to the feelings of someone one loves. There’s a feeling of hate permeating the rooms and it increases and increases as the months go by. Someone is watching and waiting to kill me. I have had a private detective in residence for the past month but a fat lot of good he turned out to be.”

  “Good heavens! How did you find a private detective?”

  “I fo
rget,” said Ginny. “Someone gave me a name and address. Fosdyke his name is. He came with excellent references and Harvey gave him a job as a footman so that no one would suspect anything. He told me about Cyril and Jeffrey and Tansy plotting against me but I know about them. They’re only out to drive me away—not murder me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this?” demanded Gerald. “I have a right under Mr. Frayne’s will to send them packing.”

  “It’s much better to have them under my nose,” said Ginny, yawning. “That way I can find out what they’re up to. They’re not very clever.”

  She yawned again.

  “You’d better catch some sleep,” said Gerald abruptly. “I shall push back the table and make you a sort of bed on the floor, and I’ll sleep on the settle.”

  Ginny rose as well. “If you weren’t such a stuffed shirt, Gerald,” she said with a sudden return of her most irritating manner, “I could remove—well, something that is making me most uncomfortable, and you could throw caution to the winds and even go so far as to unbutton your jacket.”

  “If you have no care for your reputation, I most certainly have,” said Gerald, flushing. “Furthermore—”

  “Oh, don’t start jawing,” said Ginny with a rare trace of anger. “I am going in to the kitchen to remove whatever it is I have to remove and spare your blushes, dear boy, because when I return you won’t know the difference.”

  With that she marched into the kitchen and slammed the door. Blast all women, thought Gerald wrathfully, and with great daring he unbuttoned his jacket and loosened his collar.

  CHAPTER TEN

  He awoke early the following morning as a pale ghost of a dawn filtered through the shutters. He unlocked and unbolted the door and pulled it open. A great drift of snow tumbled into the room revealing the same white roaring wilderness behind it.

  Gerald fetched a brush from the kitchen, swept as much of the snow back outside as he could, and slammed the door again. Ginny had not moved.

  She lay sleeping like a child, with her cheek resting on her hand. He tucked the quilts around her and threw a pile of logs on the glowing embers of the fire.

  Then he stood looking around, at a loss as to what to do next. He kept expecting servants to appear with trays of tea and cans of hot water. Perhaps he should rouse Mr. Figgs and see if there was a razor he could borrow.

  He climbed up the narrow dark stairs and located Mr. Figgs’s bedroom under the eaves. The landlord was lying asleep, snoring, with his mouth wide open and an empty brandy bottle lay on the floor. Gerald walked over to a scummy handbasin in the corner of the room and found a cutthroat razor. He would take it downstairs and boil it before he used it.

  He walked back downstairs and looked with increasing irritation at the sleeping Ginny. In the absence of servants, he thought savagely, a woman should be bustling about boiling his shaving water and fixing his breakfast.

  He stood over her, coughing very loudly, and at last he nudged her gently with the toe of his shoe. Still she did not move, and feeling very hard done by, he pushed open the kitchen door to a rousing welcome from the black beetles, who seemed to be everywhere.

  He discovered a small stove in the corner, its top laden with dirty pots and pans. He threw them into the sink with a resounding crash and then cocked his head to one side, hoping the noise would awaken Ginny, so that she could take over these womanly duties. But still she slept. “Like a pig,” he muttered as he fetched the kettle from the fire with a lot of unnecessary clattering and banging.

  His fury mounted as he realized that water was obtained from a pump in the yard, which would, in all probability, be frozen solid. He opened the back door and scooped large quantities of snow into the large kettle. Fortunately there were plenty of logs in a shed outside the kitchen door but no kindling. He dragged in an armful of logs and put two into the black mouth of the stove, threw a cupful of paraffin over them, and dropped a match. There was a whoosh that removed some of his eyelashes but at least the damn thing was crackling away. He thumped the kettle on and looked around. Everything seemed to be dirty—teapot, plates, cutlery, and pots and pans. He eased himself out of his evening jacket and, donning a greasy apron, he started to work.

  Five kettlefuls of water later the kitchen was relatively clean and the beetles had retired in disgust. Lord Gerald had done the dishes quite as violently as he could in the hope that the bangs and crashes would awaken Ginny. But on she slept while his lordship thought nasty thoughts about her as he scrubbed the pots savagely and tried to hang the cups on their hooks by throwing them across the kitchen.

  He picked up a dishcloth that was spread over a small chair and found himself looking down at a pair of frivolous corsets with little eau de nil roses on the suspenders and a quantity of black lace at the bosom. So that’s what Miss Ginny had gone to remove. He hung them up behind the kitchen door by one of the suspenders and hoped Ginny would be disgraced when she saw them exposed to view.

  He found a side of bacon in a meat safe beside the door and some eggs in a basket in the larder. The bread was old and stale but could be sliced and toasted. As he set to work to cook breakfast his bad temper miraculously fled. He had a warm feeling of achievement. By George, it just showed what a man could do!

  As he waited for the bacon to cook he found an extra kettle and tiptoed in—anxious not to wake Ginny this time—and hung it over the fire without so much as a chink of metal.

  But she awoke.

  She would, he thought bitterly. Just when all the work is done!

  But Ginny was so full of praise for his efforts and had clapped her hands in delight at the sight of the clean kitchen, that he became cheerful again and they had a very companionable breakfast in front of the fire.

  They were left much to themselves for most of that day. Mr. Figgs had lost his pleurisy, only to find a hangover, and had said he would cure that with a hair of the dog. But he had drunk the whole coat quite quickly and had retired again to his bed.

  Ginny and Lord Gerald had found a greasy pack of cards and had passed most of the day in winning and losing large fortunes from each other. A dinner of a cheese omelette with more cheese to follow went down splendidly. Ginny carried up a tray of food to the landlord and then called Gerald up to light a fire in Mr. Figgs’s room, for the landlord was still complaining of feeling poorly and seemed to enjoy the novelty of being able to lie in bed and have the upper classes wait on him for a change. It was a situation he would not have allowed in normal circumstances, but what with the storm howling outside and the inn cut off from civilization, the social barriers did not seem to matter.

  All constriction seemed to have vanished between Lord Gerald and Ginny and they teased and joked and laughed like two children.

  But as the evening wore on a feeling of unease began to creep over Gerald. Ginny had brushed out her golden hair and it hung down on her shoulders in a gleaming mass. He was becoming painfully aware that he was isolated in this inn with a very attractive girl. He felt jumpy and nervous. He prayed he would not take advantage of the situation and that Ginny would remain her pleasant, cheerful, friendly new self and not say or do anything to precipitate a scene.

  He rather gruffly suggested an early night. Once again Ginny snuggled down among the rugs and quilts on the hearth, and once again Lord Gerald doubled his long legs up on the settle and tried to close his eyes.

  He looked down at Ginny and found she was staring up at him, wide-eyed, and with an unreadable expression on her face.

  “What is it?” he asked quietly.

  Ginny sighed. “If this were a book,” she said, putting her still bandaged hands behind her head, “it would all be so romantic.”

  Lord Gerald firmly closed his eyes.

  “I mean,” Ginny went on in the same placid voice, “it is just as well we feel no attraction for each other, or the situation would be quite agonizing.”

  Lord Gerald pretended to snore.

  “And furthermore,” added Ginny, “can
you imagine if it were Peter Paster here or someone like that instead of you… ?”

  Gerald never knew quite what happened except that he was suddenly seized with a fit of the most terrible temper. Hadn’t he behaved like a gentleman all day? Hadn’t he slaved like a scullery maid to clean the kitchen while she snored her stupid head off?

  With a great effort he said, through his teeth, “I am not Peter and I am too tired to get involved in one of your stupid discussions about romance, so go to sleep.”

  “All right,” said Ginny. And she did!

  Gerald simply couldn’t believe it. He uncoiled himself from the settle and knelt down on the floor beside her. His collar dug into him and he started to remove it. Why should he worry about the conventions when she was not awake to notice how politely he slept in all the discomfort of a dirty shirt. He then removed his shirt with a sigh of relief and threw it onto the settle opposite.

  Ginny opened her eyes. Lord Gerald was kneeling over her in his vest and trousers, the flickering shadows from the fire playing along the gold hairs on his muscular arms. They looked at each other for what seemed like a long time, Ginny, wide-eyed and wondering, and Lord Gerald, hard and tense, crouched in the firelight.

  Then she raised one of her bandaged hands and lightly touched his neck.

  All hell broke loose inside Lord Gerald de Fremney.

  He pulled her up into his arms and fastened his lips on hers, deeper and harder, crushing her against him, his senses swirling and throbbing until only one thought, one mad desire burned in his brain, and that was to quench this terrible burning passion that Ginny was able to arouse by a mere touch of her hand.

  Sometime later, when his heart had stopped thudding and a glimmering of sense came back, he smoothed her hair back from her brow and tenderly kissed her mouth. “I’m sorry, Ginny,” he said quickly. “It should not have been like that.”

  And the infuriating Miss Bloggs smiled up at him in the firelight and murmured, “Really? You must show me what it should have been like.”