“I’m afraid I’ve ruined your Cousin George’s suit,” she told Reba apologetically as she jumped up to dress for breakfast. “And I’ve no money to make it good for I lost every cent gambling.”
Reba gave her an unseeing look. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.
Carolina was burning to ask what was in the letter, but she forebore. Reba was a Long Planner. She would tell her in her own good time. But finally Carolina could bear it no longer. There were sounds of life about the school, the girls were rising. Soon somebody would be dashing in to ask what happened last night.
“Reba,” she asked. “Was it bad news?”
Reba looked up, her expression still veiled. “In the letter? Oh—no. I’m going home.”
There was a finality in Reba’s voice that prompted Carolina to ask, “You mean, for the holidays?” Because everybody was going home for the holidays—all but herself of course, and Reba had asked her to spend the holidays with her. The family coach would call for them tomorrow.
“Not just for the holidays,” Reba said, sighing. “For good. The letter was from my mother telling me to pack all my things, that I wouldn’t be coming back to the school.”
Carolina blinked at her. “Why? Has something happened?”
Reba gave her a sardonic look. Her answer was roundabout. “My oldest sister was married last spring to a wool merchant in Bristol where we used to live,” she told Carolina. “And you remember I told you that early this fall my other sister, who’s two years older than I am, married a shipowner’s son in Plymouth.”
“Yes,” said Carolina, adding frankly, “I was surprised you didn’t attend the wedding.”
Reba gave a short laugh. “My mother wouldn't let me attend. The wedding was held at the groom’s home in Plymouth. The reason given that it couldn’t be held at our home was my mother’s ill health, but there was no truth to that. It was because it would look strange if I didn’t attend a wedding held nearby in Essex but plenty of excuses could be given why I didn’t go all the way across England to attend! The truth is I haven’t been allowed home since the day I was caught behind the hedge with one of the footmen.”
Carolina’s eyes widened. She had known that there was something mysterious about Reba’s relationship with her family, but she hadn’t known what it was. And Reba, for all that she talked a lot, rarely said anything about her personal life away from the school.
“Were you in love with him?” she asked. “The footman?”
Reba gave her an astonished look. “Good heavens, no! I was just terribly bored! We live out in the country now, you know—not like Bristol where there were lots of people and things to do. I was just amusing myself!”
Seeing the startled look on Carolina’s face, Reba laughed. “Oh, nothing really happened she said. “I was just—experimenting. You know.” She sighed. “But my dress was half off and—well, the upshot was that now my mother considers me ‘unreliable’ where men are concerned. She decided she was too busy trying to get the house in Essex in shape and trying to make her way with the neighbors to ‘watch me as she should’ so she stuck me down in Hampshire with Aunt Bella—George’s mother.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t send you to her own people.”
Reba gave her a droll look. “Oh, she doesn’t have anything to do with them. They’re all poor as church mice and live around Bristol. Mamma’s family didn’t want her to marry Papa because he didn’t have a steady job”—actually Jonathan Tarbell had started life as a tinker but Reba chose not to add that enlightening tidbit!—“and Mamma swore if he ever made a success she’d dress up in silks and hire a coach and six and ride around in front of their houses and cut all of them dead!”
Carolina stared. This was certainly a new view of Reba’s mother. “And did she?”
“She did,” said Reba grimly. “And now we own the coach and six. There’s only one of her blood relations Mamma speaks to. I think that’s the real reason she egged Papa on to leave Bristol and buy himself ‘a proper house’ somewhere else. So we moved to Essex.”
And promptly consorted with footmen under hedges. . . .
“Why aren’t you still in Hampshire since your mother sent you there?” wondered Carolina.
Reba laughed. “Because after Aunt Bella packed George off to London to study law, Willie—her other son—came down with the pip! Willie’s the apple of Aunt Bella’s eye and nothing would do but that she must take him all the way to Bath where he could ‘take the waters’—and she didn’t want to be bothered ‘watching’ me along the way. So she’d heard about this very strict school in London—remember, it had the reputation of being the strictest school in London during old Mistress Chesterton’s reign.” Carolina well remembered hearing Sally Montrose wail about it— lights out at dark, walk with your head down, speak when spoken to, the list went on and on. “So Aunt Bella got in touch with Mamma, and Mamma said fine, and Aunt Bella brought me up to London herself and put me in school here. Of course”—her laughter bubbled up—-“she didn’t know that the school had changed hands and that the new headmistress wasn’t quite what the old one had been! George got wind of it but I promised him I’d kill him if he told her!”
“Your Aunt Bella sounds dreadful,” said Carolina with feeling. “I’m surprised you went to visit her last spring.”
Reba shrugged. “I didn’t. I was right here in London all the time. With a man.”
“But—but her coach called for you!”
“Not her coach—his coach. I said it was Aunt Bella’s coach—and Jenny Chesterton was too wrapped up in her own affairs to notice the difference! We spent two whole weeks together at rooms he took. We never went out at all!”
Carolina’s head was whirling. Reba had never told her a thing about it! She had returned looking somehow —different, Carolina now remembered. More worldly perhaps. But then Reba had always looked worldly! Carolina hadn’t given it a thought.
“But you—haven’t seen him since, I take it?”
“No. He went away,” said Reba shortly. “I’ve waited all this time and now, before he can come back, Mother’s dragging me back to Essex. For good!” She brought her fist down on her ink stand with such violence that the black India ink spattered her lace-trimmed nightdress.
“You’ve ruined it!” cried Carolina, staring at the handsome gown.
“I couldn’t care less,” said Reba ruthlessly.
She might have said more but at that moment a bevy of giggling girls burst into the room, demanding to know from Carolina what had happened last night. They examined the water-stained suit, they listened raptly while Carolina explained why Clemency Dane was so certain she had seen Lord Thomas, and they all agreed that it was marvelous that Carolina had gone and that her escapade had ended with her meeting the scandalous actress, Mistress Bellamy, and particularly in the company of young Lord Freddie Bates, who everybody knew had a teenage wife in Denham who wasn’t allowed to come to London lest she learn of Lord Freddie’s excesses! Their excited voices chimed into a chorus.
But Carolina noticed that Reba didn’t join in. She felt sympathy for her friend and a kind of bewilderment. Reba knew all about her affair with Lord Thomas but she had never confided in Carolina about a lover who was important enough to make her smash her ink stand—indeed Carolina still did not know his name!
She was excused from classes to help Reba pack, for the messenger who had brought Reba’s letter had also brought a short note to Mistress Chesterton explaining that Reba was leaving the school and no refund for the remainder of the term would be expected. This had cheered Jenny Chesterton considerably for the school was full and she had just heard from an aunt of little Clemency Dane who desired to send her daughter there “directly after the holidays.” The school could now admit the girl and Mistress Chesterton would be paid for two places while feeding and housing only one for the rest of the term.
After her first outspoken burst, Reba had fallen remarkably silent, but she kept glancing thoughtfully
at Carolina as if she might be about to speak. Carolina kept on folding chemises and nightrails and bodices and kirtles into trunks while Reba tossed fans and gloves and pomades and kerchiefs and pinners—all the plunder a wealthy schoolgirl might collect—into assorted boxes.
“I will wear my plain brown worsted,” announced Carolina without looking up. “And my dark blue woolen cloak. For ’tis bound to be cold in the coach.”
About to toss an embroidered silk shawl in on top of her fans, Reba paused to rescue a gold pin set with an amethyst. “And you shall liven up the effect with my red fox tippet and fox hood and muff,” she announced cheerfully.
Carolina lifted her head from the packing and gave Reba a grateful look. Reba had been so generous in letting her wear items from her wardrobe ever since Carolina’s first day at the school, when she and her new roommate had dressed for dinner and Reba had studied Carolina’s plain worn dress and petticoat. Casually Reba had suggested, “Do you know, my plum velvet petticoat would look much better with that lavender gown? I’ve never worn it so nobody will know it’s mine. Why don’t you wear it?” And Carolina had joyously accepted the petticoat and gone down to dinner with gold embroidery glittering from the handsomest petticoat she had ever worn in her life. And after dinner Reba had said lightly, “That petticoat looks much better on you than it does on me, and do you know, it doesn’t match a thing I own? That’s because I think plum clashes with my auburn hair.” And she pressed the petticoat onto Carolina as a gift.
And gradually, encouraged by Reba, she had slipped into almost regarding Reba’s wardrobe as her own. But for this trip to the bosom of Reba’s family, she knew she would feel awkward wearing Reba’s clothes.
“Wouldn’t your mother think it distinctly strange if I arrived wearing your clothes?” she asked Reba dryly.
“Oh, not a bit of it,” laughed Reba. “Indeed she’d never know. Mamma buys things and forgets them! And Papa pays the bills from my London dressmaker— Mamma really doesn’t know what I buy and doesn’t care so long as it’s handsome. You see, she was so poor when she married my father, and their first years were hard, and then suddenly they had money, always more and more of it. Mother revels in spending. She orders everything by the dozen and doesn’t care what happens to it once it arrives. I assure you, she won’t know you’re wearing my tippet!”
Carolina’s view of Reba’s mother spun round again. She now envisioned a giddy female, delicate and shallow, lilting through life as she tried to match—with vast expenditures on trivial things—the elegance of the aristocrats she had so long admired.
She joined in Reba’s laughter, but she shook her head. “Nevertheless,” she said stubbornly. “I’m going to arrive wearing my own clothes!”
But she cast a thoughtful look at Reba. She was glad that Reba was in a good mood again but she wondered what had transformed her gloom.
She would have been astonished to know that it had been the beauty of her own face as she had looked up at Reba’s remark and the brilliant sunlight off the snow outside had caught her silver-gold hair, giving her face a glorious halo.
Breathtaking, Reba had thought. Any man would want her! And she laughed inwardly.
She had a feeling she was about to ask Carolina to do her a favor: a favor which had to do with her absent lover and being sent home. A favor which at the moment scheming Reba considered to be the most important thing in her life. A favor that she felt—of all the girls at school—only Carolina, with her lustrous beauty, could accomplish.
PART THREE
The Betrayal
* * *
Although she lures him with her smile, she knows that with the dawn
She'll hurry back to other arms and he will find her gone.
She knows she plays a devious part, and worries that it’s so. . . .
Should one betray a lover? How far should friendship go?
* * *
THE GREAT ESSEX ROAD
December 1687
* * *
Chapter 12
Beneath sunny skies the Tarbell family coach that had come south to collect Reba and Carolina from the school skidded over the slippery melting ice of London’s streets. But once they had left the old city behind them and were rolling through the countryside the weather changed abruptly. The sky turned overcast as they headed northeast, driving arrow straight up the Great Essex Road—that road the invading Romans had built some sixteen centuries ago to connect London with their mighty fortress on the River Colne, Colchester.
It was snowing when they lumbered into Chelmsford, where Reba pointed out the market that had been there “since the beginning of time” and where her father sent his livestock to be sold.
“I thought he was a merchant,” demurred Carolina, as they went by the square-towered parish church and drew up before an inn.
“He is a merchant,” Reba told her blithely as they alighted. “He has ships going in and out of London all the time. His profits are fantastic—that’s because he’s been so lucky. Usually, oh, maybe two out of three ships get through on long voyages—maybe less. But Father’s ships have always skimmed right along home!”
She gave Carolina a speculative look as they sat down in a corner of the inn’s common room near a group of pipe-smoking men. “Maybe you’ll be sailing home in one of his merchantmen.”
But she wasn’t going home. She was going to stay right here in England and marry Lord Thomas. She wasn’t going home ever. Well, maybe for a brief visit but that was all. She was about to tell Reba that but Reba was busy asking an aproned serving girl what was on the bill of fare today.
“Oysters and pigeon pie,” answered the serving girl politely. She gazed wistfully at Reba’s furs. Reba was wearing an emerald green velvet cloak and hood trimmed richly in fox which seemed to light up her auburn hair. Carolina thought she looked wonderful.
“Good, we’ll have that,” said Reba dismissively. She leaned toward Carolina and nodded her head slightly toward the group of smokers. “I think one of that rough lot over there is about to come speak to us. I can see them nudging each other, egging somebody on. Quick, cast your eyes down—the coachman will be in here in a minute and he’ll ward them off!”
Carolina snapped a quick glance at the roughly dressed men. They had honest faces, she thought, and would have looked right at home in buckskins. But to Reba clothes and money were everything. “I think you’d better cast your eyes up” she countered. “Look out the window, Reba. It’s snowing harder. We may have to stay here!”
“Oh, we’ll make it,” declared Reba confidently. “We Tarbells have the devil’s own luck—everyone says so. Remember what I told you about Papa’s ships? They always get through!”
Carolina wondered if fate, which had so long smiled on Jonathan Tarbell, might not suddenly withdraw her favor and sink his whole fleet during one of the wild storms in the Atlantic, but she forbore saying so. The “rough lot,” being ignored, took their attention elsewhere, and steaming platters of oysters and thick-crusted pigeon pie were served to the girls, along with hot spiced cider.
The weather did not improve and both girls bent over and kept their hoods half obscuring their faces in an effort to keep off the fast falling snow when they once again scurried on tall pattens to the waiting coach.
“Tell me about your lover,” Carolina said, when they had been handed inside the cold coach. “What does he look like?”
Reba bent to adjust the big fur lap robe over her emerald velvet lap as she answered. “Quite tall and dark,” she said. “And very dashing—in a conservative sort of way. He is much given to wearing black and gray.”
She could be describing the man in gray at the Star and Garter, Carolina thought, amused. As Reba spoke, Carolina was just taking a last look outside before firmly fastening the leathern flap that kept the snow out of the coach’s window on her side. She saw that a rider was just dismounting at the inn. He was paying no attention at all to the departing coach; his full attention was directed toward
his horse and the stableboy to whom he was just in the act of tossing a coin.
Carolina caught her breath and forgot what she had been about to say.
The man she was staring at through the fast-falling snow—tall and with his broad shoulders supporting a gray cloak on which the snow was quickly piling up—was surely the same man who had dragged her upstairs at the Star and Garter and locked her into a private dining room to await his pleasure.
“What is it?” asked Reba curiously as the coach lurched away. “You're sitting there like a statue! What do you see out there that's so fascinating?”
Carolina had managed one more startled glimpse before the tall man disappeared into the inn. She had seen the snow crested upon a low-crowned tricorne hat, its broad brim cocked rakishly above a dark saturnine profile, which confirmed her memory. Her last view of the tall figure was as he turned with a swirl of his dark gray cloak to go into the inn.
“It is the same man!” she cried—and for a moment she felt a twinge of panic, as if the stranger could return and claim her from the coach. “It’s the man I told you about, Reba, the one who rescued me at the Star and Garter—and then tried to hold me prisoner!”
“Really? Where?” Excitedly Reba reached over and tore open the leathern curtain on her side and stuck her head out. At the same time they heard the whip crack above the horses’ heads and the coach started forward over the icy ruts with a lurch that nearly jolted them from their seats.
“He’s gone now,” gasped Carolina. “He went into the inn.” She was searching the floor as she spoke for the velvet muff that had skidded from her woolen lap as the coach careened forward. She turned to Reba with a sudden frown. “You don’t think he could be headed the same way we are, do you?”
“Oh, I doubt it,” shrugged Reba. “Most of the traffic from London goes on up the Great Essex Road to Colchester, but we turn off here toward Cambridge.”
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