Mally burst out laughing. “And I am assured that you are proving quite excellent at such homely matters! Your crochet, I am told, is rather presentable.”
“Silence, chienne! What would the haut ton say should a whisper of this get out? I thought horsetails were attached to animals, but it seems they grow in ditches and you scour pans with them. I’ll warrant it’s one of the wonders of nature.” Annabel looked at her hands. “That Pattie of yours did it deliberately. Look at my hands, they’re quite pink!”
“Pattie did what?”
“Looked witheringly at me and said that I wouldn’t be able to manage the roast-pan. It was a gauntlet, waved under my nose and tossed disdainfully to the ground!”
“You should have known better than to let her get under your skin like that.”
“She thinks I am disgustingly useless.”
“And so you are. But very, very decorative. You’ll find some pattens in that cupboard, by the way.”
“Pattens? I’m not wearing those clumsy things.”
“Then get muddy, wet feet.”
“Patent needs no pattens.”
“You will spoil those slippers, for Llanglyn’s mud is master of spoiling anything, given the chance.”
“Pattens would not become this toggery.” Annabel admired her lovely reflection again.
“Very well, look ridiculous with muddy feet instead, but don’t say you weren’t warned.”
Annabel watched Mally strapping on pattens. “You aren’t really going to go out with those on your feet are you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, well, perhaps I will as well, but it will look quite desperate, I just know it will. Still, at least no one who matters will see me.”
Mally looked up. “Meaning Chris, presumably.”
“Yes. Is there anyone else who matters? Oh, the Prince of Wales, perhaps. I can’t call anyone else to mind.”
Mally laughed. “The Prince only perhaps? I’m sure he’d take to his bed for a month if he heard.”
“Do you think Chris will come soon? And Mr. Vallender? I so want to get up there.” Annabel looked from the tiny window and up the hills to the distant castle.
“Any day now, I should think. Chris’s business was completed two days ago, I know, for he said that his last meeting was then. It could be that he will be here when we return, who can say?”
Annabel looked anew at the pattens. “Perhaps I will leave them off then—”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake! Chris is more likely to think you ridiculous if you don’t wear them, if his opinion is so very important to you. Now then, where are my gloves? Right. Are we ready?”
“I believe so.”
Down in the kitchen Mrs. Berrisford and Pattie were surveying a rather battered cookery book. Mrs. Berrisford put her spectacles away. “Well, I don’t know, Pattie—the writing’s faded so much I really cannot begin to guess what that fourth ingredient is. Perhaps it would be prudent to forget Grandmama’s excellent dill cake and bake something we are sure of.”
“Yes,” agreed Pattie, “that would be best, I think.”
Mally smiled. “It’s only the vicar’s wife coming to tea, Mother, not the dreaded Mrs. Clevely.”
“Oh, heaven forbid!” Mrs. Berrisford put her hands to her cheeks. “Don’t even mention that woman. Where is Lady Annabel?”
“Waiting in the barouche. I just came in to see if you wanted me to bring anything back from town.”
Mrs. Berrisford looked anxious. “What am I to say to Mrs. Jones this afternoon, Marigold? She is about to ask about Maria, and I do not know that I can lie to her.”
“Then tell her the truth.”
“I cannot.”
“Then tell her a fib. You must do one or the other. Or look straight through her when she asks. Now then, what shall I purchase for you?”
“I—I made a list somewere. Oh, yes, here it is. Now you make sure George Cunningworth doesn’t fob you off with poor quality—I don’t know how much your soft London life has made you forget—”
“Nothing of importance, Mother, nothing of importance. Good-bye, then.”
“Good-bye, Marigold.”
***
The barouche rattled down toward the ford. The Afon Gwyn was full and swift after the rain, and the coachman teased his nervous team forward very slowly.
Annabel ran her fingers over the drab velvet upholstery. “I wondered that your mother kept two fine carriages, but perhaps this one is not so fine after all.”
“The landau comes out on high days and holy days. In between it is wrapped in sheets and put away in a corner of the stables. This old barouche is for general journeys around here, in and out of Llanglyn and so on.”
“But the dreaded Mrs. Clevely I have heard mentioned would rate the landau, no doubt?”
“Yes.”
“I understand your sister is to marry her son.”
“Yes.”
“Mally, whenever your sister’s name is mentioned, I cannot help noticing how reticent everyone suddenly becomes. I have been listening and paying good attention, so there is no point, you know. Your mother’s voice carries from one end of the gallery to the other—and back again sometimes. Maria has run away, hasn’t she?”
“You have been busy listening, haven’t you?”
“A week of rain—there had to be something beyond homely pursuits.” Annabel smiled.
“Maria has eloped, it would seem.”
“And not with her fiancé?”
“Not with him.”
“And now she is somewhere, you don’t know where, with someone, you don’t know who?”
“Yes.”
The barouche lurched out of the ford again and the team were brought up to a better pace, their hooves clattering smartly on the flat stones laid on this part of the road.
Annabel leaned out to survey the mud ahead. “Oh, my Lord! That isn’t mud, it’s molasses!”
“I told you.”
“I wonder you Llanglyners aren’t born with webbed feet!”
The market square was crowded and the noise was tremendous as the stallkeepers shouted their wares. Plump country women carrying hen baskets and fruit baskets walked slowly between the rows of stalls or stopped to talk together in groups. The barouche came to a standstill by a pie stall, and Annabel gazed around. The Hell-fire stagecoach was just pulling out of the Three Feathers, team jingling and horn sounding.
“Last calling! Last calling for Hereford!”
Annabel shuddered. “Who could travel in that thing! And look at them? Piled inside like grapes to be pressed.”
“Not everyone has various carriages from which to choose, Annabel.”
Some loose chickens fluttered from the hooves of the coach’s team, scattering in all directions as the horn sounded suddenly. Some penned goats set up a frantic bleating to add to the cacophony, pushing and straining against the hurdles restraining them. A dog began to bark, snapping at the hooves until the driver’s whip lashed close to its tail, when it immediately retreated to the safety of a stall.
“Come on, Mally,” said Annabel briskly, “let’s get down and inspect the stalls. I’ve never been to a market before.”
“Oh, yes you have. Almack’s.”
They visited George Cunningworth’s store, checking each item purchased with great care, including the close examination of the quality of the flour.
“That there flour en’t ’dulterated, there en’t nothing in that bag ’ceptin’ good grain. Damn, I’d swear it on a stack of Bibles, so help me I would!”
“You had better be being honest, Mr. Cunningworth.”
“As the day is long, Mrs. St. Aubrey. As the day is long.”
Annabel sniffed. “Mm—the evening’s are drawing
in, aren’t they?”
“That flour is—”
“We know. Good, pure grain.” Annabel dipped her fingers in it. “It’s too fine and white, isn’t it? There’s no mill yet that can get it like that. Come, Mr. Cunningworth, you bring the real wheat flour, and we’ll forget this poor stuff.”
He scowled, snatching the offending bag from the counter and muttering beneath his breath. “Gast Saesneg!”
Annabel raised a haughty eyebrow. “Well, really! If I am an English one of those, sir, you are a cnaf Cymreig!”
Mally stared at her. “I had no idea you were so knowledgeable.”
“One of the interminable lessons learned this past week at Pattie’s knee. When she recovered from the shock of a lady asking how to be rude in Welsh, she was more than obliging.”
George thumped a new bag on the counter without a word. Annabel smiled sweetly and put it in Mally’s basket. “Thank you, my man.”
Outside Mally burst into helpless laughter. “His face! He expected me to maybe query the flour, but when you did, and when you then proceeded to be as rude to him as he was being to you! Standing there in your London toggery, sifting flour with your fingers in a manner born, and cursing as roundly as any fishwife!”
“Yes—and if any after-dinner chitchat ever comes to my ears concerning this episode, Marigold St. Aubrey, I’ll put a ring through your nose!”
They spent an hour or so walking around the market, with Mally now and then stopping to speak with those she knew. Several of them asked after Maria, and she dutifully told them that her sister was staying with relatives. The bell of St. Crispin’s rang out at midday and Mally stopped by the haberdashery stall to look at the church.
Annabel put back the braiding she had been examining.
“I married Daniel in that church at midday,” murmured Mally softly.
“Well, the next wedding won’t be a quiet country affair, will it?” said Annabel briskly. “Chris Carlyon’s do will be fashionable and attended by everyone.”
“It won’t, you know. We’re marrying here, not in London. And we shall not be inviting everyone.”
“What a waste of a good wedding. If I were marrying him, I’d wheedle St. Paul’s itself! No—Westminster Abbey!”
“With the Prince of Wales as best man?”
“That would be exquisite. But you must drag Chris to this backwood and sneak quite shiftily into the church. Are you afraid to marry him in an ostentatious blaze of showing-off, then?”
“No!”
“Don’t look outraged and full of jostling protests. Oh, come now, Mally, since we’ve been here I’ve seen you time and time again deep in thought, staring at something or other. Beginning on our first evening here when you were gaping at the lily pond as if you expected a mermaid to appear at any moment. It’s further back than Chris Carlyon that your thoughts are going still, isn’t it?”
Mally knew that she was flushing, but could not help herself. “You are wrong,” was all she could think of to say.
“No, I’m not,” said Annabel softly, “and it’s that one thing more than any other which makes Chris fair game still. I have not much time, Mally, but I shall use it, you may depend upon that.”
“I know.”
“I like you very much, Mally, but I love Chris.”
“I know that too.” Mally smiled. “And I have picked up that particular gauntlet.”
“I had noticed. Still, all is not yet lost, not by a long chalk.” Annabel picked up the braiding again and looked at it more closely. “What color would you say this is?”
“Puce.”
“No, it isn’t—puce is the color of my father’s face when he’s overindulged the maraschino. This is a darkish sort of purple, I fancy.”
“It is still puce.”
“Then I shall not buy it, for that word is one I do not like, and if I have to say that I am wearing puce braiding, it will be more than I could bear.” She put it back, glancing at the woman behind the stall.
The woman was watching something over by the Three Feathers, and Annabel and Mally immediately turned to see what it was. Jasper Turney was deep in conversation with several other men, and they were gesticulating toward the church.
Annabel glanced around at the suddenly quiet market. “There is an atmosphere, is there not, Mally? And the good Mr. Turney is in the very thick of it again.”
Jasper turned then to shout back into the courtyard of the inn. “Brew?” he shouted clearly. “Brew? Get the others, that Jamaican’s left his horse hidden in the churchyard. We reckon as he’s gone to Towers! And hurry!”
Chapter 17
Mally gaped. “We must do something!”
“Such as? Mally, we are two mere women, we can hardly stop a mob such as the one now forming.” Annabel looked around apprehensively. “We would be better advised getting ourselves well and truly away before anything happens.”
“And leave them to hang that poor man? We can’t!”
The men were moving away from the inn now, hurrying down the street toward the church.
“God Almighty, it isn’t happening, it can’t be—” Mally watched the faces of the people she had a moment before been speaking with. They wanted Abel dead, it was there in their eyes. Vindictive hatred.
There was shouting ahead by the church and the sound of a horse galloping up the street, the hooves echoing around the walls and windows of the houses.
The skewbald was swift, too swift for the outstretched hands of the nearest men as the Jamaican flicked the reins from side to side, urging the animal faster. His leather jerkin flapped wildly and his hat flew off, revealing a tight mass of black curls, and Mally saw how wide and frightened his eyes were as he glanced behind at the men.
“Annabel, get back, he’ll ride us down—” Mally pressed back behind the stall, still watching the approaching horse. “Annabel!”
But Annabel remained where she was, staring at the oncoming rider and the shouting men behind him, running back toward the market square.
“Annabel!” screamed Mally, beginning to step forward to snatch the other’s arm.
But it was too late. The horse was upon them, dashing for the small gap between Annabel and the stall, and Mally was forced away again. Annabel was buffeted sideways and the horse swerved, throwing the Jamaican heavily against the base of the stall, where he lay winded. Annabel sprawled in the mud by the goats’ hurdles, and the frightened horse galloped on, its stirrups swinging and its reins trailing.
The crowd were stunned by the swiftness with which it had happened, and for a moment they stood where they were, the only sound being that of the horse. And then even that dwindled away to nothing. Jasper Turney’s voice rang out. “We got ’im! We got ’im at last!”
His shout jerked the crowd from its immobility and they began to close in on the half-conscious man who still lay by the stall, his face contorted with pain. Mally pushed around the stall and stood by the Jamaican.
“No!” she cried. “Don’t—”
A pistol shot rang out and she turned blindly in the direction of the sound. A landau had turned into the square, its roans sweating, and the Carlyon arms clearly visible on its lacquered doors. The door swung open and Richard Vallender climbed down, standing with one foot on the iron steps and a pistol balanced over his forearm.
“One more step, for anyone, and it will be their last, I promise you.”
Annabel scrambled to her feet, wiping anxiously at the dark stains and splatters of mud which covered her; but the anxious wiping was a nervous reaction, for she only made the marks worse.
Chris stepped down from the other side of the landau, tossing his spent pistol back inside. He paused to fluff the lace at his cuffs, glancing around the square almost casually.
Mally felt that she would burst in
to tears, but she crouched beside the injured man. “It’s all right, Abel, it’s all right now. Mr. Vallender is here—”
“Mr. Vallender?” Abel made as if he would get to his feet, but she pushed him gently back.
Chris came through the crowd toward her, and the people melted back before him. “Are you all right, Mally?”
“Yes. But Abel’s hurt.”
“You and Annabel go back to the landau, and quickly,” he said quietly. “Richard’s pistol has but one bullet and there are rather more than that gathered around us.”
“But Abel—”
“He isn’t heavy, I’ll carry him.” He smiled at her, touching her cheek gently. “Go on now and let us ease ourselves out of this den.”
She straightened, catching Annabel’s arm. “Leave the mud alone, Annabel, and come on—”
“But it’s such a mess.” Annabel’s voice was curiously flat and toneless.
Mally glanced swiftly at her and then pulled her toward the landau. She turned as she heard the sound of a pony and trap. Dr. Towers was bringing the chestnut pony up to a smart pace and he halted in surprise as he came into the square and saw what was happening.
“Abel’s hurt, Dr. Towers,” explained Mally.
Chris picked up the injured man and carried him gently to the landau. The doctor nodded at him. “Take him to the courthouse, and I will see him there.”
Annabel climbed into the landau, still fussing about her ruined clothes, and Richard kept the pistol pointed over the crowd.
Abel reached out to him. “I had to come, Mr. Vallender.”
Richard smiled quickly, putting his hand over the other’s. “I know, Abel, I know.”
The landau moved slowly around the square when Mally had climbed in, and the crowd remained stationary. Mally was shaking. What if the landau had not arrived at that moment? What might she and Annabel have witnessed? She glanced at Annabel again. The girl was staring at her soiled gloves. Chris put his arm around her worriedly.
“It’s all right now, Annabel. Come on now.”
She raised her head. “I just stood there, Chris, I stood like a lump of stone, and I caused the accident. It was my fault.”
Mally : Signet Regency Romance (9781101568057) Page 11
