Penelope

by Beaton, M. C.

  “No! You shan’t escape!” cried Penelope, running forward and seizing hold of Augusta. Augusta struggled and punched like a fury while Penelope held on. The tone of the crowd had changed. It was only two women fighting after all, and a rare sight that was. They hung back and cheered Penelope on with all the enthusiasm of an audience at a prize fight.

  Penelope’s desperate cries for help were lost in the appreciative roars of the crowd.

  “Either come or stay,” shouted Captain Jessey to Augusta. “We’re setting sail.”

  Suddenly a shot whistled through the shrouds of the ship and everyone froze.

  “Hold hard!” called a stern voice from the hill and the watchers swung round. Penelope and Augusta released each other and stared in the direction of the voice.

  The Earl of Hestleton, with Rourke and two footmen at his heels, came bounding down towards the quay. The Earl was hatless and his auburn hair gleamed like fire in the setting sun. His clothes were travel-stained and muddy, but he was an imposing figure for all that.

  “Stop that woman!” he called. “She’s a traitor!”

  “Spies is it!” cried the Captain in alarm. He had been prepared to take Penelope’s accusations as a joke, but the sight of the formidable Earl suddenly seemed to make the charges all too true.

  “I’m having none o’ this,” said the Captain. He gave Augusta a shove which sent her tumbling down the gangplank onto the quay. A few sharp commands and his sailors hauled the gangplank on board.

  Augusta stumbled to her feet and backed towards the edge of the quay before the cold anger in the Earl’s face. Penelope, who had retreated to the quay at the first sight of the Earl, stood behind the reassuring bulk of Rourke.

  “You are making a mistake,” babbled Augusta wildly. “It’s not me. It’s the Comte de Chemier you want.”

  The Earl looked at her with disgust and loathing. Then he lowered his pistol. “Come, Miss Harvey,” he said.

  Augusta twisted her head. Behind her the Mary Jane was already some yards from the quay.

  With a hoarse cry she suddenly twisted round and jumped into the water.

  Everyone rushed to the edge. Augusta was bobbing on the choppy water. She had lost her turban and wig and her thin, sparse hair floated around her fat shoulders like seaweed.

  “Help! For the love of God—help!” she cried to the ship in a thin, weak voice, and then her head sank under the surface.

  After a few breathless seconds it appeared again. The Earl slowly raised his pistol and levelled it at Augusta’s head.

  “Go on, fat ‘un, swim for it!” cheered the crowd, beginning to enjoy the drama immensely. Augusta saw the sun glinting on the barrel of the Earl’s pistol and saw his finger tightening on the trigger. “Penelope,” she wailed.

  The Mary Jane was still close to the quay, her sails hanging idly and her sailors crowding along the rail.

  Penelope stared at the Earl in horror. He could not mean to shoot Augusta in cold blood.

  She darted forward and knocked his pistol in the air, jerking the Earl’s finger in the trigger. The pistol went off but the ball went sailing harmlessly over Augusta’s head.

  The Earl turned and glared down at Penelope. “You little … accomplice !” he hissed.

  “I—I’m not !” cried Penelope. “Did you not receive my letter?”

  But the Earl, who had left London long before Penelope’s letter was even due to arrive, was too angry to listen.

  A roar from the crowd made him turn around.

  A squally wind had suddenly filled the sails of the Mary Jane and swung her round while the sailors were gazing openmouthed at Augusta struggling in the water. The great schooner bore down on her and the bow hit her full in the back of the neck before she went under. The sailors leaped to the ropes, and the Mary Jane narrowly missed colliding with the quay. When she moved off again, there was no sign of Augusta.

  “Get a move on, man,” said the Comte to Captain Jessey, “or I’ll tell the world about your smuggling activities.”

  “Smuggling is one thing. Spying’s another. Can you swim?” asked the Captain mildly, rubbing the stubble on his chin.

  “No, I can’t,” said the Comte testily. “What’s that …”

  He got no further.

  With one massive blow Captain Jessey sent him sailing over the side.

  The Comte struggled and choked and flailed his arms. Suddenly, like some great monster of the deep, the dead body of Augusta surfaced in front of him, her sightless gooseberry eyes staring straight at him and her mouth stretched in an awful smile.

  The Comte raised his arms in panic and sank like a stone.

  Mr. and Mrs. Jennings, hurrying down to the quay, stared in amazement at the scene in front of them. A crowd was slowly moving away like a theater audience leaving when the show is over, gossiping and exclaiming and heading for the nearest alehouses to discuss the drama further.

  Penelope, her long blond hair blowing in the wind and her cloak billowing out around her slim body, was staring up into the face of a tall man with copper-colored hair.

  Mrs. Jennings came bustling forward. “What’s all this, Miss Vesey?” she demanded. “We was that worried about you, but we couldn’t get into Dover sooner because of the state of the roads.”

  Penelope remained silent, staring up at the Earl with a pleading look on her face.

  “Go, Miss Vesey,” he said in a quiet voice. “Think yourself lucky I do not put a bullet through that beautiful head of yours.”

  Penelope opened her mouth and then closed it again. What was the use? He was determined not to believe her. And he was little better than a murderer himself. He had been going to shoot Augusta as he would have shot a mad dog.

  “Thank you for coming to collect me, Mrs. Jennings,” said Penelope in a low voice. “Please take me home.”

  “That I will,” said Mrs. Jennings in a motherly voice but with a hard look at the Earl. “Mr. Jennings, do you but stay here and find out what has been happening. I will take Miss Vesey to the Green Man for some refreshment.”

  Without another look at the Earl, Penelope allowed herself to be led away.

  “Now, sir,” began Mr. Jennings.

  “But the Earl replied before he could go on, “I have no intention of giving you any explanation, sir, whoever you are. Miss Vesey may tell you what she pleases. And, now, if you will excuse me, I will go in search of the local magistrate. It is as well I go in search of him, before he comes in search of me. Good day to you!”

  An hour later the Jenningses were sitting in the inn parlor and listening openmouthed to Penelope’s tale of blackmail and murder and treason.

  “And he’s no better than my aunt,” ended Penelope. “The Earl of Hestleton, I mean. He was going to kill her!”

  “Brute!” said Mrs. Jennings stoutly.

  Mr. Jennings put his chalky fingernails together and said in his dry, precise voice, “Now, ladies, all throughout this tale it appears to me that Miss Vesey and the Earl have let emotion take over from intellect. First, let us look at the case from the Earl’s point of view. He could not possibly have received your letter before he set out from London, Miss Vesey. He finds out that the woman who drove his brother to suicide is also a traitor. He decides to no longer worry about protecting his dead brother’s name—a very difficult thing for the Earl to do—supposing he is only half as proud as the gossips say he is.

  “And what does he see when he arrives on the quay? You, Miss Vesey, with the conspirators.”

  “But he saw me fighting with my aunt!”

  “Let me finish,” said Mr. Jennings mildly. “The Earl is almost mad with rage. I do not believe he would actually have pulled the trigger, but, if he had, I should not have blamed him. But you, Miss Vesey, knock up his pistol, setting it off. So what does he think? He forgets about your struggles with your aunt and naturally assumes you are an accomplice.

  “Now, if you and Mrs. Jennings will travel back to Wold, I will seek out the magi
strate and explain your side of the business to the Earl.”

  “Don’t,” said Penelope in a low voice. “I hate him!”

  Mrs. Jennings sighed, “What an emotional pair of young people you are, to be sure! Each one hates the other so violently for not being perfect! Ah, well, nonetheless I must go to the magistrate. For if I do not give you some protection, Miss Vesey, the Runners may come looking for you!”

  When Mr. Jennings had left, Mrs. Jennings looked anxiously at Penelope. “Why don’t you have a good cry, my love,” she said soothingly.

  “I shall never cry over that man again!” said Penelope.

  And with that, she put her head down on Mrs. Jennings’s comfortable bosom and cried as if her heart would break.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE EARL RODE up the long driveway towards Wyndham Court, failing, for the first time, to acknowledge the salute of his lodgekeeper.

  He wanted to get home and bar the doors, he wanted to get drunk, he never wanted to see another woman again, he did not know what he wanted.

  By the time he had changed out of his travel-stained clothes and was seated in front of a roaring fire in his drawing room with a glass of brandy in his hand, he began to breathe easier for the first time in days.

  He had laid the whole story in front of the magistrates, nobly obsolving that baggage Penelope from all blame. He had then ridden weary days to London and had put the matter before several severe gentlemen at the Foreign Office.

  It was decided after much long and weary consultation and interrogation that very little harm had been done. The spies were dead and there was no reason to alarm the British public by broadcasting Viscount Charles’s part in the affair. The Foreign Office knew from their own spies in France that even that famous conversation between the Duke of Wellington and the Prince Regent had entailed no great breach of security.

  He had then shaken the dust of London from his heels after closing up his town house.

  Everything was done that could possibly have been done. He could not sit at leisure and hate Penelope Vesey as much as he wished. But his thoughts gradually became more troubled. He could not help remembering Penelope’s pleading eyes and the fact that she had been fighting with Augusta when he had erupted onto the scene.

  He got wearily to his feet and moved over to the desk at the window to go through his correspondence. Light snow was beginning to fall outside, dancing and swiring over the lawns, intensifying his strange feeling of isolation and loss.

  Almost the first letter that came to hand was Penelope’s express. In it she had poured out all her fear and anxiety. How she dared not go to the authorities because his brother’s spying activities might be found out. She forgave him wholeheartedly for breaking the engagement. He would not, she said, wish to ally his great name to that of a girl who was related to a blackmailer, murderess, and spy. A cramped and tearstained postscript at the bottom seemed to leap out of the page. “I will always love you,” Penelope had written, “and will always pray that you will come to forget me and find some suitable young lady of good family to be the mother of your children.”

  The Earl put down the letter slowly and stared unseeingly out at the now heavily falling snow. What a fool he had been! He had seen her again, only to lose her again.

  He leaped into action, roaring for his horse and then taking the stairs five at a time to repack his bags.

  Rourke gloomily watched his flying figure and selfishly hoped that he would not have to accompany his lordship this time. Enough was enough!

  Penelope put down her needle with a sigh. The ball gown she had just completed spilled its silken lavender folds over her lap. Outside the sun shone merrily down on the snow-covered garden.

  The girls were to attend their first ball that evening. Mrs. Jennings had insisted that Penelope go too. It was ridiculous, that good woman had said roundly, for Penelope to mope her life away when there were so many handsome fellows around.

  The ball was to be held in the home of Mr. Delton, a wealthy brewer who lived in great style on the outskirts of Dover. In the mysterious way of society, beer was not considered to be “in trade,” and so all the flower of the local county were expected to attend.

  The waltz was now danced everywhere, and Penelope had made sure that her charges would be able to perform the dance with grace instead of turning it into a romp as they were wont to do.

  Penelope had secretly hoped that the roads would be blocked, but the snow had stopped falling several days ago and the road to Dover was once again clear.

  Nor would Mrs. Jennings hear of Penelope’s plan to wear a turban and sit with the chaperones. How was she ever to get over that terrible Earl if she did not make an effort?

  Mr. Jennings had met the Earl briefly in the magistrate’s home and had been too relieved to hear that Penelope was exonerated to try to effect a reconciliation between the Earl and the girl.

  Privately Mr. Jennings thought Penelope was well out of that engagement. The Earl was too haughty and austere to be the husband of such a young and pretty girl.

  All too soon, the Jenningses’ carriage was rolling along the hilly cobbled streets of Dover. Mr. Delton’s town house was very grand indeed with a double row of steps rising up to an entrance on the first floor.

  Flambeaux flickered, smoked, and blazed in the brackets outside, and the faint strains of a waltz reached Penelope’s ears as she descended from the carriage.

  The Deltons, husband and wife, were terrifyingly gracious and condescending, but Mrs. Jennings seemed to find nothing amiss except in the fact that the Deltons quite patently did not approve of Penelope being one of the party. Mrs. Delton ran one cold eye over Penelope from her blond hair to her fashionable lilac silk dress—too grand for a governess—and said in frigid tones that Miss … er … should sit with the chaperones. ‘Twas more fitting.

  Overawed and ill at ease, Mrs. Jennings had not the courage to argue, contenting herself with giving Penelope’s hand a sympathetic squeeze.

  Penelope did not know whether to be glad or sorry as she took her seat beside the row of middle-aged matrons.

  About twenty couples were dancing energetically in the long room. Banks of artificial flowers, artificially scented, were massed against the walls which had been draped in rose silk for the occasion. Large fires crackled at either end of the room and tall branches of wax candles stared down at their reflections in the polished floor.

  The fashions of the ladies were not so extreme as in London. There were no clinging muslins here, damped to reveal every inch of the wearer’s form, no transparent dresses and scanty petticoats. Stiff formal taffetas, velvets, and merinos were the order of the day. The men were as colorfully dressed as the girls—Mr. Brummell’s fashion for strict black and white in the ballroom having not yet penetrated as far as Dover—and many of them wore their hair powdered.

  Penelope sat on, grimly counting her blessings. She had a good job and a comfortable home. But all the while a sly little feminine voice in her brain was telling her that it would be marvellous to have just one dance.

  Apart from a perpetual aching feeling of loss, Penelope was already beginning to forget the horror of that day on the quay. Augusta already seemed part of some grotesque, feverish nightmare.

  A footman hurried into the ballroom and accosted Mr. Delton, then both men hurriedly left the room. Mr. Delton reappeared after a few moments and summoned his wife and whispered in her ear.

  Mrs. Delton turned and stared straight across the ballroom to where Penelope sat with a look of shock and surprise on her face. Then she too left the room.

  Penelope looked sadly at her slippers. She had tried to tell Mrs. Jennings that silk lilac and an elaborate hairstyle were much too fine for a governess.

  The quadrille came to a finish and Penelope had found some comfort in thinking that her charges had performed their parts competently.

  The double doors at the end of the ballroom were flung open.

  The Earl of Hestleton
entered, flanked on either side by Mr. and Mrs. Delton.

  He immediately made every man in the room look provincial and dowdy.

  He was dressed in a close-fitting black silk evening coat, tailored by the great Weston. His black knee breeches and white stockings clung to his muscular legs and sapphires blazed from the snowy lace of his cravat and on the buckles of his shoes. He wore his auburn hair unpowdered, and his face looked very severe and tense.

  Penelope sat rigid in her chair, unable to look away. He had come to disgrace her! Why else would he look so severe, thought Penelope, mistaking the Earl’s fatigue and apprehension for anger.

  The couples had started to dance the waltz, and above their bobbing heads Penelope saw the Earl making his way round the edge of the ballroom towards her.

  Suddenly Mrs. Jennings was at her side, her motherly face creased with worry. “It’s that awful Earl again,” she whispered. “I have talked with Mr. Jennings and he agrees I should take you straight home.”

  The Earl craned his head above the dancers and saw Penelope and Mrs. Jennings hurrying towards the door. He started forward, to push his way through the dancers, when, to his dismay, he was waylaid by the town magistrate, Mr. Henry Desmond. Mr. Desmond had proved to be very kind and helpful on the day of the deaths of Augusta and the Comte, and the Earl realised he could not cut him. He was forced to carry on a conversation with Mr. Desmond while the double doors of the ballroom opened and closed behind Penelope and Mrs. Jennings.

  Well, at least he knew her address. As Mr. Desmond talked on at length about the magisterial problems of his job, the Earl remembered his arrival in Dover only that evening. He had obtained Mr. Jennings’s direction from the landlord of the Green Man and had then ridden hard to Wold, only to find the house empty except for the servants who told him that the Jenningses and their governess had gone to the Deltons’ ball in Dover.

  Another gruelling ride back to Dover and more lost time while he changed into his evening clothes, although he would have preferred to defy the conventions in the manner of young Lochinvar and ride into the ballroom on his horse.