She picked the candle up again and set it on the table. There was a small black iron stove against the far wall and, on a shelf above it, two more candles stuck in bottles. Frederica lit both of them and turned her attention to the stove. There were a few sticks of kindling beside it and an old newspaper, but no logs. Perhaps there might be some outside, stacked at the side or the back of the hut.
The wind moaned around the building. Gritting her teeth, Frederica went outside again. Black clouds were rushing across the moon, plunging everything into Stygian darkness.
‘I hope I never go blind,’ muttered Frederica, stumbling over something at the corner of the hut and badly grazing her knee. At the back of the hut, she felt some rough sacking and fumbled under it.
Logs! And plenty of them.
She filled her arms with them and made her way carefully back round to the front, shouldering her way in the door, and kicking it shut behind her with one foot before the candles could blow out.
She pulled open the iron top of the stove and filled it with paper, kindling and logs, and then lit it with one of the candles. With a satisfactory roar, the fire began to burn.
She pulled the chair up to the stove, opened the little door at the front, and spread her fingers out before the blaze.
‘I’ve done it!’ thought Frederica with a sort of wonder. ‘I am alive. I have survived …’
She looked about her. The hut consisted of this one small room. Beside the fishing rods were some old game bags. There was no bed. It was obviously used by the water bailiff to rest during his patrols up and down the river, and probably also by gamekeepers. There was a tiny wooden dresser with pewter mugs in one corner. Frederica went over and looked in the cupboard underneath. There was half a loaf of stale bread, and beside the dresser, on the floor, a small cask of cider.
Frederica found a knife in the dresser drawer and tried to cut the bread. It was very hard but she managed to hack off a chunk. Then she poured herself a mug of cider and returned to the fire. The stale bread dipped in the cider tasted marvellous. Her eyes began to droop as the heat from the fire made her clothes steam. She removed her bonnet and looked sadly at the wreck of it. Searching in her sodden reticule which had miraculously remained attached to her wrist through all her adventures, she found her comb and began to comb out her wet hair in front of the fire.
But after a time, even the effort of combing seemed too much for her tired arms.
She collected the game bags and made a lumpy sort of mattress of them in front of the fire on the earth floor. It was wonderful to lie down and stretch out in warmth and safety. The buckles of the canvas game bags were digging into her but she hardly noticed.
Her eyes began to close.
She awoke an hour later. The wind had died down and so had the fire. She had blown out the candles and so the room was lit only by the faint red glow of the stove. She stumbled to her feet, groaning with all her aches and pains, and threw more logs on the fire, waiting until it was cheerfully blazing again, before settling down to sleep once more.
And then she heard a loud curse.
Frederica sat up. She must be imagining things. Although the wind had dropped, the rushing of the stream filled the air.
She was just about to lie down again when she distinctly heard footsteps.
She rose to her feet and faced the door. If it was the water bailiff then she would have a lot of explaining to do. But what if it was a footpad?
Slowly, the door creaked open and a tall figure loomed on the threshold.
Frederica gave a faint scream.
‘If, as I believe, you prove to be Miss Armitage,’ said a deep, masculine voice, ‘then it is going to give me great pleasure to wring your neck.’
‘It is you,’ said Frederica weakly. ‘It is Pembury.’
The Duke of Pembury strode into the room, kicking the door shut behind him. He lit one of the candles and held it up and surveyed Frederica. He had been about to shout at her, to curse her for her folly, to damn her for frightening him out of his wits, but when he saw the slight figure in the torn and muddy dress and noticed the scratches and bruises on her face, he said instead, ‘You gave me the deuce of a fright.’
‘Is Lady Godolphin with you?’ asked Frederica.
‘No, of course she is not with me,’ he said testily. ‘The path you took is enough to kill anything other than a mountain goat. When you did not return, I and my servants searched and searched for you. A farmer came by in a gig and told us there was an inn just around the next bend. We felt sure you must have found your way there. But when we got to the inn we found you were still lost. Lady Godolphin was wailing to heaven that you had surely been taken by footpads and were now being “ravishinged”.
‘We spread out in different directions. I eventually found the route you had taken by falling over the cliff in the dark and losing my lantern. I ended up against a bush and found a scrap of torn muslin on one of the branches. The moon was coming out and so I managed to follow your tracks. It was just beginning to rain again before I reached here. I had lost all trace of you since the ground had become hard and rocky and I began to fear you had fallen in the stream.
‘But here you are, complete with roof over your head and fire on the hearth. I don’t know whether to beat you or burst into tears with sheer relief.’
‘I am so sorry,’ said Frederica. ‘Please do not be angry.’
‘We can’t stay here,’ he said wearily. ‘You will be compromised.’
‘Is it very far to this inn?’
‘Miles and miles. You walked quite a distance, my sweeting.’
The wind howled, and the rain, once more increasing in force, beat against the shutters.
Frederica shivered. ‘Upon my life,’ she said, ‘I would as lief be ruined as dead.’
The duke swung his heavy cloak from his shoulders and took off his hat. ‘We will wait for a little, Miss Armitage. But if the storm does not abate, then journey on we must.’
He spread his coat over the game bags on the floor in front of the fire. ‘Fortunately my clothes did not receive a wetting. Sit here by me on my cloak, Miss Armitage.’
Frederica looked at him nervously. His face looked satanic in the leaping flames of the stove.
He sat down and looked up at her. ‘Do not be missish. I have no intention of seducing you.’
She sat down next to him, bolt upright, staring at the flames as if she had never seen anything so interesting in all her life.
‘Relax.’ He put an arm about her shoulders and drew her to him. ‘Now, sleep. I will stay awake and I will rouse you in about half an hour.’
Frederica lay rigid in the circle of his arm. ‘What an unusual situation,’ she thought. He neither moved nor said anything and at last her eyelids began to droop. Her body relaxed against him. With a weary little sigh, she laid her head on his chest and fell fast asleep.
He smoothed back her hair which was tickling his chin. It was very fine hair, like a baby’s. What a frail little thing she seemed, and yet she had proved remarkably adept at looking after herself. He began to feel very tired. Still holding Frederica, he wrenched off his cravat and threw it across the room. His coat felt tight and uncomfortable. He laid the still sleeping Frederica down on his cloak and divested himself of his coat, waistcoat and boots. It would do no harm to have half an hour’s sleep himself.
The duke lay down beside Frederica in front of the fire and gathered her into his arms. She murmured something in her sleep but did not awake.
Frederica was having a deliciously shocking dream. She was swimming in a warm blue sea without one stitch of clothing on. The water caressed her limbs and little silver fish darted to and fro among large pink rocks which stood up from the ocean floor. And then a merman started to swim towards her. She was not afraid of him, and when he took her in his arms, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to kiss him.
Just as Frederica was kissing the merman in her dreams, the duke woke up, half wondering wh
ere he was. The girl was pressed tightly against his chest and he could feel her small breasts through the thin cambric of his shirt. Her body was causing a tingling feeling of excitement to run through his own.
He sleepily put his hand under her chin and bent his mouth to hers. Frederica, in her dream, was passionately returning the merman’s kisses. The Duke of Pembury found himself at the receiving end of one of Frederica’s most passionate offerings. He thought he had never felt such a burning sweetness from a kiss in all his life. His lips buried deeper and his expert hands lazily caressed the slim young body pressed so tightly against his own.
And then a voice seemed to scream in his head. ‘It’s that Armitage girl, you fool!’ He rolled away and jerked himself upright and started piling logs onto the fire.
He twisted around. Frederica was, miraculously, still asleep, but a long sunbeam was shining through a chink in the wooden shutters.
‘Hell and damnation,’ said the Duke of Pembury bitterly. ‘Compromised. And by a schoolgirl. What the deuce kept me asleep so long?’
Frederica’s eyes flew open at the sound of his voice and she stared up at him. Her eyes were great dark pools in the dim light of the hut.
‘Aye, you may stare, miss,’ snapped the duke. ‘I over-slept and thanks to your folly in losing yourself, I will now have to marry you. You!’
Frederica sat up, her face flaming.
‘If you think for one minute, your grace, that I am going to tell anyone that I spent the night alone with you in this hut, you are very much mistaken.’
‘Do you mean to say, you don’t want to marry me?’ The Duke of Pembury looked at Frederica with an expression of shock mixed with disbelief in his black eyes.
‘Of course not, your grace,’ said Frederica. She laughed. ‘You are much too old.’
He should have felt relief, he knew that. On the other hand his whole mind was screaming out that he had never been so insulted in all his life. Since he came of age, he had been fighting off debutantes. He knew that any girl or woman at the Season would rush into his arms at the slightest invitation.
He shrugged himself into his coat. ‘I am possibly too mature for you for you are sadly childish. I will appreciate your discretion. You may cover yourself with my cloak. If asked where I found you, I will say I found you as you were leaving here this morning. Come along.’
He strode to the door and wrenched it open. ‘I hope all men are not so bad-tempered,’ thought Frederica dismally. ‘For my family is sure to find me a husband and they will nag me to death if I do not marry.’
She bundled the folds of the duke’s cloak about her and followed him out of the hut.
The air was fresh and sweet. Birds were chirping in the bushes and a mellow sun shone over the rain-sodden steeps of the gorge.
The duke was striding up the path without looking behind him.
‘I cannot run after him,’ thought Frederica, ‘and leave the fire still burning and the game bags on the floor.’
She hurried back into the hut and began to clear up. The duke made his reappearance just as she was pouring a pewter mug of cider over the fire.
‘Do you plan to stay here all day?’ he demanded.
‘I was merely putting things in order,’ said Frederica mildly. ‘Your cravat is still lying in the corner where you seem to have dropped it.’
The duke picked it up and stuffed it in his pocket. He realized she had the right of it. It was folly to march off, leaving the hut with all the evidence that two people had passed the night there.
When they were finally on their road, he saw, in the full sunlight, that her clothes were torn and muddy and that she was stumbling wearily.
‘Take my arm,’ he said abruptly. ‘We will follow the path in the opposite direction from where we came. With luck, we may soon find a road to the top.’
Frederica looked about her in a dazed way. The roaring black nightmare of the night before had been transformed into a pleasant pastoral scene. Even the river was tamer now, broader and lazier.
The path made a sudden twist away from the river and began to ascend in winding loops up the steep side of the gorge to their right.
Frederica stumbled wearily and would have fallen had he not caught her firmly round the waist. Ignoring her protests, he swung her up into his arms and set off up the path.
He walked very quickly, disturbed by the feel of her body against his chest, remembering that kiss.
Frederica was remembering her strange dream. It had seemed so real. She tried to recall the merman’s face but it looked like the duke’s.
There was a shout from above. The duke stopped and lowered Frederica gently to her feet. A group of militia led by their captain were hurrying down the path.
‘Rescue at last,’ said the duke. ‘Remember. I only met you this morning.’
Frederica looked up into his eyes with a steady gaze. Then those odd eyes of hers began to sparkle with humour and that bewitching smile lit up her face. ‘My dear duke,’ she said gently, ‘you really must believe me. I have absolutely no intention of marrying you. You must have been very lucky in love because you seem to find it impossible to believe I do not want you. And yet, it is almost as if you are hoping that I will try to compromise you in order to either justify your low opinion of my sex or to restore your bruised amour propre.’
‘You little minx!’ said the Duke of Pembury with a reluctant smile. ‘I shall keep well away from you in London, or goodness knows what trouble you will embroil me in.’
At that moment, Lady James was taking a fond farewell of Mr Guy Wentwater on the steps of her London house. He had enlivened the journey for her considerably.
‘I am sorry,’ said Mr Wentwater, ‘that you will not help me in my plans to confound the Armitages – particularly after you told me that Miss Frederica had been instrumental in speeding your departure.’
Lady James laughed. ‘If I thought that tiresome little girl had attracted Pembury in the slightest, I would certainly help you in your schemes. But she was a passing whim, nothing more.’
SIX
It was the eve of the beginning of the London Season and Frederica’s five elder sisters were gathered in Minerva’s elegant drawing room for a council of war over the teacups.
Minerva was still looking pale and tired. Her children had been confined to the nursery. Deirdre had a one-year-old son and Daphne a six-mont-hold baby girl. It was too early yet to tell whether Diana was with child or not. But the three mothers tactfully avoided discussing babies or the possibility of babies. For Annabelle had still shown no signs of becoming pregnant and became cross and sad when her more fortunate sisters discussed their offspring.
‘To business,’ said Minerva, tapping her spoon against her cup. ‘We are all agreed that a husband must be found for Frederica. She is a gentle, good little thing but it will take all our efforts to bring her to the notice of a suitable gentleman.’
‘I think Frederica has great charm,’ said Diana defiantly, her black eyes flashing. ‘Why rush her into marriage? Our husbands have all contributed to give her a large dowry. She may pick and choose.’
‘Frederica has a fine spirit,’ said Minerva. ‘But she is not precisely …’
‘Pretty,’ said Annabelle, complacently patting her golden curls.
There were cries of protest from the other four. ‘Be sensible,’ said Annabelle. ‘We are all here to help her find a husband, because, if we do not, she may end up in the arms of a fortune hunter.’
‘Is there no hope of Pembury forming a tendre for Frederica?’ asked red-haired Deirdre. ‘After all, he did rescue her.’
‘I do not think any of us would wish to see our beloved Frederica married to a man such as Pembury,’ said Minerva primly. ‘He has an unsavoury reputation and …’
‘And it does not say much for darling Frederica’s charms that she experienced no trouble from that quarter,’ said Annabelle.
‘You always were a cat,’ said Deirdre. ‘I suppose you feel
you would have had to fight him off. Well, let me tell you it is well known that Pembury has reformed and I had it from the Duchess of Dunster that he is looking for a wife.’
‘How dare you call me a cat, carrot-top,’ flashed Annabelle.
‘Girls,’ admonished Minerva. ‘I would like to make one thing plain. This is my home and I will not have it turned into a bear garden. Control yourselves. Sensible suggestions only, or remain quiet.’
‘There is a certain Mr Harrison,’ said Daphne. ‘He has a pretty house in Sussex and a prosperous estate. He is a friend of Dantrey’s. He would escort Frederica to the opera if I asked him.’
‘You know,’ said Deirdre reflectively, ‘I called on Frederica the other day. When I asked about Pembury, she did not talk much about him but she blushed a great deal. There may be no hope of Pembury forming a tendre for Frederica, but I am very much afraid she has formed a tendre for him.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Minerva. ‘That will never do. Comfrey is anxious to take me off to the country and I am anxious …’ She was about to say ‘anxious to give the children some fresh air’ but because of Annabelle, she ended, ‘to have some fresh air. Now, which one of you is going to be in town?’
Annabelle frowned. ‘Brabington has promised to take me to Paris.’
‘Dantrey will not be coming to town,’ said Diana, ‘and I do not want to be separated from him. What about you, Daphne?’
But the elegant Daphne was no longer interested in the pleasures of London. All she wanted to do was return to the country to her husband, Simon Garfield, and to her beloved baby.
‘Harry and I will be in town,’ said Deirdre cheerfully. Deirdre flouted convention by always referring to her husband by his first name. ‘All the rest of you need to do is to send the beaux in my direction and I will take them round to Frederica.’
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