by M C Beaton
While the duchess went out in her carriage to broadcast the glad news, Penelope scraped enough of her own money together to buy a ticket on the roof of the stage. With only one bandbox containing her old clothes, she finally jogged out of London on a windy afternoon, feeling better than she had done since Lord Andrew had left. The empty fields of freedom stretched on either side. She was going home—home, where heartbreak would be more bearable.
Chapter Eight
Lord Andrew’s first feeling on finding his family home in an uproar over the disappearance of Penelope was one of relief. He was glad she had escaped.
The duchess’s scenes were ripping the town house from top to bottom. He went to his father’s study to find the duke singularly unmoved by all the fuss. “That’s what comes of taking little nobodies out of their stations,” said the duke. “She’ll come about in a day or two. Then we’ll have another upstart foisted on us. She’s sent for Harford to explain. That should be interesting because Harford has quite acute hearing when he really wants to understand anything.”
“Well, let’s hope Harford does understand,” said Lord Andrew wearily. “For if the idiot shows the least sign of still wanting Penelope after this humiliation, then Mama is bound to go to the country to drag Penelope back. She would not take the cottage away from her, would she?”
“Oh, yes she would, and quite right, too,” said the duke. “Little mushrooms like Penelope Mortimer should be taught not to bite the hand that feeds ’em.”
“Mushrooms do not bite hands.”
“You know what I mean. Anyway, that interfering vicar, Troubridge, went ahead and handled the sale of Miss Mortimer’s home in her absence and secured the lease of the cottage for her. Can’t get her that way. Went through her room here to see if we could pin theft on her, but she’s left everything behind.”
“Everything?” Lord Andrew thought of the ring he had given her.
“Yes, everything, down to the last bonnet.”
“I am glad you found nothing to enable you to bring a charge of theft against her,” said Lord Andrew, “for I would have been forced to appear in court and say my parents were lying.”
The duke shot his son a nasty look. “No use you going spoony over the chit. If you want to get your leg in her lap, then set her up in a house in town.”
Lord Andrew felt himself becoming very angry indeed. “If Miss Mortimer were as pushing and vulgar as you are trying to make out, then why did she not jump at the chance of being a duchess?”
“I don’t know,” said the duke waspishly. “I don’t understand the little minds of mushrooms.”
A footman came in to say that the Duke of Harford had arrived and that Her Grace requested the presence of the duke.
“Not I,” said the little duke, picking up the newspaper and rattling the pages angrily. “You go, Andrew. It’s all your fault.”
Lord Andrew bit back the angry retort on his lips. He was suddenly curious to see this duke.
He found his mother, the Duke of Harford, and Miss Worthy in the drawing room.
He crossed to his fiancée’s side. “You had better leave, Miss Worthy,” he began.
“Oh, let her stay,” moaned the duchess. “She is to be of the family anyway.”
“What I want to know,” said the Duke of Harford, “is where Miss Mortimer is?”
“She is in the country,” said Lord Andrew clearly and distinctly.
“What’s she doing there?” asked the duke.
“She does not want to marry you,” said Lord Andrew.
“Wants to tarry a bit, does she? Fetch her back.”
“SHE DOES NOT WANT TO MARRY YOU,” shouted Lord Andrew.
A peculiarly mulish look crossed the duke’s face. He turned his head away and looked out of the bay window to the trees in the park.
“Don’t know what you are saying,” he said. “The Duchess of Parkworth has agreed to this engagement, so as far as I’m concerned, it still stands.”
A gleam of hope appeared in the duchess’s eyes.
“My dear Harford,” she cried. “Such understanding, such generosity.”
“Pooh, pooh, ma’am,” said the duke, waggling his fat fingers. “I can count on you to arrange matters.”
Lord Andrew’s eyes narrowed into angry slits. It was all too evident that the Duke of Harford was going to hear only what he wanted to hear.
“I take leave to tell you, Harford,” he said, “that you are a pompous old fool!”
“Lord Andrew!” screamed Miss Worthy in alarm. “You must not speak to our poor Harford so. Miss Mortimer has behaved shamelessly. The least she can do is to come to her senses.”
Lord Andrew rounded on his fiancée. “Please be quiet, Miss Worthy,” he snapped. “You will soon be my wife, and I shall expect you to obey me in all respects. Is that clear?”
Miss Worthy burst into tears and was comforted by the Duke of Harford. “Don’t cry,” said the duke. “It’s not our problem, Miss Worthy, it’s theirs. What about coming for a stroll in the park with me, and leave ’em to arrange things, mmm?”
“That would be most kind of you,” said Miss Worthy, throwing Lord Andrew a defiant look. “I can see I am not wanted here, and I was only doing my best to help.”
“Yes, yes,” said the duchess in an abstracted way. “Run along, do. This is most unfortunate. Maria Blenkinsop shall have the last word after all.”
Casting a final reproachful look at Lord Andrew, Miss Worthy exited on the arm of the Duke of Harford.
No sooner had they left than the Duke of Parkworth shuffled in. “Well, my dear,” he said, kissing the air somewhere near his wife’s left cheek, “how goes it?”
“Better than we could have expected,” said the duchess. “Harford still wants Penelope. All we have to do is bring her back. It will take a leetle coercion.”
“Can’t do anything about her cottage,” said the duke. “That vicar, Troubridge, is an interfering cleric.”
“Oh, there are other ways,” laughed the duchess. She rang the bell, and when a footman answered it, said, “Henry, tell—let me see, I need some men with muscles—ah, tell Beedle, the groom, and James, the second footman, to make ready to come with me to the country. Have the traveling carriage brought round. Tell Perkins to get the maids to pack for me, oh, two days stay at least.”
Lord Andrew looked at his mother in horror. “You are going to force her to come back. You are even prepared to kidnap her. Father…”
“No use looking at me, boy,” said the duke grumpily. “I think your mother has been shamelessly tricked by Miss Mortimer.” His face brightened. “Don’t use force. Tell her we’ll have her committed to the madhouse if she doesn’t behave herself. Got no relatives. Best way of getting rid of unwanted people that I know of. Got the chaps who will sign the papers.”
Lord Andrew stood up and looked down at them as they sat side by side on the sofa. Two pairs of hard, aristocratic eyes stared up at him—the eyes of the old aristocracy, as brutal and stubborn as any peasant. He began to wonder wildly if they really were his parents. He thought of appealing to his elder brother, the marquess, and then dismissed it. His brother would think they were behaving just as they ought. Then Lord Andrew conjured up the image of his beloved tutor, Mr. Blackwell. But that excellent man would no doubt tell him that arranged marriages happened all the time and that Penelope Mortimer would live to thank his parents. But then, Mr. Blackwell had always considered love a romantic invention of poets and women.
He turned on his heel and went up to his room. There was nothing he could do. He would need to dress for the evening and go on as if nothing happened.
“What shall we wear this evening?” asked his valet, Pomfret.
“Clothes, you fool,” snapped Lord Andrew.
“Certainly, my lord,” murmured Pomfret, delighted at having the choice of wear left in his expert hands for almost the first time. He busied himself laying out evening clothes. “We will wear the sapphire stickpin in our cr
avat,” said Pomfret happily, standing back and narrowing his eyes as he surveyed the clothes laid out on the bed. “Ye-es. And your lordship’s sapphire ring. Do you have it? I have not seen it in our jewel box this age.”
“What?”
“The sapphire ring, my lord,” said Pomfret patiently. “We have not got it.”
“Wait,” said Lord Andrew abruptly. He strode from his room and went to Penelope’s bedchamber. He searched in the jewel box on the toilet table. There were all the jewels his mother had lent Penelope still there. He searched in closets and drawers, and then stood in the middle of the room, frowning. She had kept his ring. She had also kept the lorgnette. She had spurned everything else, but she had kept those.
He returned to his own room. “My riding clothes, Pomfret,” he snapped. “Also a small imperial with a change of clothes for several nights. Hurry, man. And then run downstairs and tell them to get my traveling carriage ready—no, that won’t do—get the racing curricle, and put the bays on it.”
“May I ask where we are going?”
“We are not going anywhere. I am going to a prizefight. Bustle about, man, and do not stand there with your mouth open. And when you’ve done all that, send a footman round to Miss Worthy’s with my apologies. I shall not be dining with them this evening.”
“And what excuse shall we give?” asked Pomfret in a pained voice. “We cannot tell the lady we are going to a prizefight.”
“Tell the lady I have some dread disease.”
“What kind of disease, my lord?”
“The pox. No. Dammit, use your imagination. Say I have gone to Bath to take the waters.”
So as Lord Andrew rode hell for leather out of London, crisscrossing the back streets so as not to be seen passing his mother’s carriage, Miss Worthy was shocked to learn that Lord Andrew was suffering from a severe case of gout and had gone to Bath.
The Green Man, the inn where Lord Andrew and Penelope has spent the night, was in the village of Beechton.
Trade had been slack over the past few weeks, and so Mr. and Mrs. Carter were delighted to welcome a gentleman guest.
Mr. Jepps was that guest, and Mr. Jepps was bone-weary. He had scoured the countryside around Dalby Castle, trying to find evidence that Lord Andrew and Miss Mortimer had racked up somewhere for the night. They must have claimed to have traveled all night, but remembering that storm, Mr. Jepps hoped to find proof they had lied. He had gone from inn to posting house along the road he had traveled back himself, but without success. He had been thinking of giving up when he decided, as the weather was unusually fine and as he was still in hiding from Lord Andrew, that he might as well pass the time of his exile by trying in the opposite direction.
He told the Carters that the room they had assigned to him was very comfortable and that dinner had been excellent. He was just about to ask that all-important question—had a certain noble lord and a young miss resided at the inn—when Mrs. Carter, who had served his meal and who was predisposed to gossip, the inn being unusually quiet, said, “I’m glad you find your room to your liking, sir. There was a noble lord staying there not so long ago with his pretty wife, and he found it most comfortable.”
“He did?” said Mr. Jepps idly, and then sat bolt upright in his chair. “He did?”
Flattered by his interest, Mrs. Carter leaned her hip against the table and went on. “Yes, ever so glad they were to get out of the storm. Don’t know as you recall that storm. Fearsome, it were.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Jepps.
“They was soaked to the skin. He up and says he’s a lord, and Mr. Carter warn’t about to believe him. All shabby and muddied he were, with no servants or carriage. But he produced gold and offered to pay all in advance. Well, when we seen that there gold, we knew right away we had the quality. And his poor lady was shivering fit to drop.”
“He may be a friend of mine,” said Mr. Jepps as casually as he could. “What was his name?”
“Lord Andrew Childe.”
“Ah!” Mr. Jepps sighed with pure satisfaction. “And they spent the night together?”
“Why, to be sure, yes! Mind you, my lord, he was all for leaving in the middle of the night if we could have got a carriage, but we couldn’t do anything till dawn, when the storm was over. Mr. Baxter, a gentleman who lives close by, lent them his pony and gig.”
“And they share the same bed?”
Mrs. Carter looked at her visitor in sudden disapproval, beginning to suspect there was something prurient in his interest.
“What else should a man and wife do?” she said crossly. “Mr. Carter went up during the night to tell them that the storm was still bad and that he could do nothing for them till the morning, but he did not like to disturb them. They was lying like babies in each other’s arms.”
“Alas, Mrs. Carter,” said Mr. Jepps, “you have committed a sin. You have been most grievously misled.”
“Whatever do you mean, sir?”
“I mean that Lord Andrew Childe is not married, and the lady with him is an innocent protégée of his mother’s whom he has appeared to have deflowered with your innocent connivance.”
“Never!” Mrs. Carter turned quite pale, for Mr. Jepps looked threatening. She went to the door and called her husband.
When the landlord came in, Mrs. Carter repeated all that Mr. Jepps had said.
Mr. Carter scratched his head. “That there lord should be forced to marry the girl,” he said roundly. “Sech goings-on! Mr. Baxter’ll know what to do. Mortal clever is Mr. Baxter. You go along with me to Five Elms. Mr. Baxter keeps late hours.”
So Mr. Jepps set off with the landlord, hoping that this Mr. Baxter would not prove to be some bluff member of the country gentry who would only turn out to be amused by the episode.
He was in luck. Mr. Baxter was a Puritan, a scholar, and a Whig. He considered the English aristocracy decadent. He felt their days were past. He had been a staunch supporter in his youth of George Washington and then Napoleon. But George Washington had become too fashionable in Britain to excite the radical mind of Mr. Baxter. Instead of reviling the great general, the unaccountable British erected statues to him—long before there was even one statue to Washington in America—named clubs after him, and members of the military praised his acumen. Mr. Baxter had turned his allegiance to Napoleon, longing for the day when liberty, equality, and fraternity should come to the streets of Britain. But Napoleon had made himself emperor, and that had left Mr. Baxter without a hero. Although now older and staider than in the days of his enthusiasms, Mr. Baxter still retained all his loathing for the aristocracy, crediting them with wielding more power than they actually did. Had Mr. Baxter been born a gentleman, then he might have realized the aristocracy and landed gentry came in a mixture of good and bad like everyone else. But he had been born of working-class parents and had worked his way up to be a printer, amassing a comfortable fortune which had allowed him to buy Five Elms and retire to a life of pleasant isolation with his books.
He had been annoyed at the alacrity with which he had lent Lord Andrew his gig and pony. Mr. Baxter had found himself flattered at being able to be of service to a lord and his pretty lady. He looked back on his obsequious help to them now with a sort of loathing, the way someone else might look back on a night of debauch.
And so when he heard that Lord Andrew had passed the night in the arms of a hitherto innocent girl, his eyes began to gleam with a crusading fire. He remembered Penelope’s fresh beauty. In his mind’s eye, Lord Andrew’s features became those of a brutish satyr. If anyone had told Mr. Baxter that he was an extremely romantic man, he would have been quite furious. He did not realize he was weaving a vulgar Haymarket tragedy about Penelope and Lord Andrew—the innocent country girl deflowered by the wicked lord. He could see it all. Penelope walking along in the snow with a babe in her arms begging for crusts while this rake went on to ruin another virgin.
“I am sure the idea of making Lord Andrew see the folly of his ways is
rather daunting….” began Mr. Jepps after Mr. Carter had told his story.
“He has sinned, and he must make reparation,” cried Mr. Baxter. He was a small man with black hair combed down in a fringe on his forehead. His black eyes gleamed with reforming zeal. “We will set out on the morrow and confront this Lord Andrew.”
Mr. Jepps had no intention of confronting Lord Andrew himself, but he was confident that the puritanical Mr. Baxter could be safely left to do everything that was necessary.
“First of all,” said Mr. Baxter, “let us pray.”
Mr. Jepps looked helplessly about him, but the landlord had pulled off his hat and was already getting down on his knees. The prayer lasted over an hour. Stiff and sore, Mr. Jepps finally breathed “Amen” with such grateful fervor that Mr. Baxter looked at him approvingly.
