She had not noticed him in the bustle of their arrival at the station, she had been too occupied in helping Elaine’s maid and former nurse to settle her charge on a seat in the shade while Kit Knightley and the steady, middle-aged footman who was to travel with the ladies – returning home once they were settled – oversaw the removal of the various trunks, valises and hatboxes from the carriage to the train.
Elaine had waved her away. ‘Charlotte, I promise you that I’m well taken care of.’ She laughed at her younger friend. ‘Go and explore the station, or take a look at the train, I know you’re in a fever of excitement. No, really, I mean it. How can I possibly be tired already? I had a good night’s sleep at the White Hart after that decorous carriage drive from Finchbourne to Salisbury yesterday and this morning I’ve not been allowed to do so much as lift a finger.’
Reassured on this point Charlotte had ventured closer to the engine to marvel at the hardiness of the driver and fireman, working in all weathers. Today was so hot, she thought, fanning herself gently, that the railwaymen would relish the breeze in the open cab. The driver, seeing her friendly interest, called down to her and boldly invited her to climb up and join him.
‘Better not,’ she told him with a rueful look at her fresh chestnut brown poplin with its modest crinoline. ‘What a wonderful view you must have from up there.’
As so often before, Charlotte’s approachable manner gained her a friend, together with a great deal more information than she really required regarding pistons and steam, and the driving wheel which, she gathered, was the monstrously high wheel at present dwarfing her.
Rescue, in the form of Kit Knightley hove in view, but, as Kit strolled down the length of the platform to join her, she was suddenly struck by the expression on the face of a bystander. A man of middle age, middle height, middling looks, his clothing respectable but undistinguished, he raised his head and stared at Kit with a bright-eyed interest as he passed, then cast a thoughtful look at Charlotte herself.
‘Well, Char?’ Kit Knightley smiled as Charlotte broke off her conversation with the engine driver and turned to greet him. ‘Still excited at the prospect now you come face to face with the steaming titan?’
‘More than ever,’ she declared with a little wriggle of anticipation and raised a laughing face to the engine driver who called down a friendly farewell. ‘To think we’ll be in Bath in just a few hours and how much more comfortable it will be for Elaine than to be jounced around in a carriage. Not that your carriage isn’t a very elegant one,’ she added, by way of a hasty disclaimer.
He laughed at her. ‘However well-sprung my carriage, it can’t compare in comfort to the train, especially with the footrests they usefully provide for invalids.’ He sobered suddenly and took her hand, saying in an earnest voice, ‘Char, you will look after her – and yourself – won’t you? I feel I am really obliged to get home and see poor Randall; the place can’t run at harvest time without a bailiff so I shall have to act for him, and he’s one of my oldest friends besides. I shan’t rest until I see for myself that his injuries aren’t life-threatening.’
‘Of course we’ll manage,’ Charlotte assured him. ‘And, of course, you must go – poor Mr Randall must be in a ferment of worry as well as in great pain. Who could have foreseen such an unfortunate accident stemming from a mere rut on the track?’
‘The rutted track was the beginning, certainly,’ he agreed, turning to walk back with her towards the seat where Elaine was waiting. ‘But no more rutted than usual. For the life of me I can’t understand why a cart that has travelled that road a dozen or more times should suddenly decide to lurch so disastrously to the side. Pinned between a stone wall and the cartwheel, with the weight of a heavy wagon laden with sheaves behind it, it’s a wonder poor Randall wasn’t killed. In fact, it’s a miracle he survived with no more than a broken leg and bruising.’
When Kit bent to address his wife, Charlotte noticed the stranger again. He was still staring at them, his eyes narrowed now with a keen interest as he seemed to single her out. A shudder, barely concealed, ran through her; and throughout the business of getting Elaine comfortably settled in the first class carriage and making sure that the luggage was securely stowed Charlotte strained her memory. No, she concluded, as Kit took his affectionate farewell of his wife and cordially shook her own hand, the man was a complete stranger. Charlotte had an excellent memory for faces, developed in part as a precaution during her adventurous youth in Australia in the train of her charming but erratic stepfather. The man across the way was certainly unknown to her, but was she equally unknown to him?
She stood at the carriage window to watch the last minute hustle and bustle and saw that the stranger was now surrounded by a crowd of late comers all jostling each other as they attempted to board the train.
Suddenly there was an outcry, screaming and a loud shout of alarm and Charlotte gasped as she saw that the man she had been observing so unobtrusively was now hanging half over the platform, held only by the strong arm of a porter while he and other passengers reached out to a young lady who had apparently fallen on to the railway line.
‘What is it, Char?’ Elaine was anxious.
‘I can’t quite see … I wonder if I should go and help? Oh no, I think it will be all right.’ Charlotte craned her neck out of the window, all semblance of ladylike behaviour banished by curiosity and a feeling of unease. ‘A young woman fell on to the track but they’ve managed to rescue her and … yes, she’s being carried to the ladies’ room.’
She withdrew into the carriage to reassure Mrs Knightley. ‘I give you my word, Elaine, although her dress looks to be bloodstained there is a busy bustle about her, so I think she must be injured, but not fatally. There are no glum faces – rather they are all agog with excitement at the drama.’
She looked at the eager faces a little way up the platform. No, there was no grief there, so the girl’s injury must be unfortunate rather than life-threatening. But what of the inquisitive stranger? Yes, he was there still, rubbing ruefully at his strained shoulder, with a grim frown dawning on his face as he conferred earnestly with the porter who had hauled him to safety. As she stared at him anxiously, the stranger raised his head, his expression still puzzled and angry. He caught her eye and his face cleared as he gave a little nod, and turned away from the porter, pausing only to slip something into the willing hand. The crowd of onlookers engulfed him again and she lost sight of him, but she thought the man had hastened to board the train which was now about to leave.
Watching the crowd as the train drew out of Salisbury Station Charlotte chewed at her bottom lip. What an unfortunate incident and what a mercy the young woman seemed to have escaped serious injury, though Char shuddered at the thought of all that blood. But what of the man who had been watching Charlotte herself? Was he on her trail, about to destroy her happiness by revealing the past she hoped to have buried?
CHAPTER 2
Bath! I’m actually here, in Bath; if only Ma could see me now. Charlotte kept her raptures to herself as she leaned back against the elegant cushions of primrose silk in their well-appointed private sitting-room. Her companion looked across the room, with a smile of warm affection.
‘Well, Charlotte? Does it live up to your expectations?’
‘Beyond them,’ Charlotte confessed as Elaine Knightley nodded in amused sympathy. ‘Far, far beyond them! I stood like a gawk, staring at the bustle of people as we were waiting outside the station, feeling as if I were in a dream.’ She shook her head with a slight, rueful smile. ‘It’s no use, I really must stop expecting to walk into the pages of a novel, for even if we were to come across him, Mr Darcy might well be taking the waters and the hot bath for his rheumatism! And after all, here I am with Mrs Knightley. What a pity your name is not Emma.’
Elaine’s smile faltered for a moment. ‘That was always the plan, you know, that we would name.…’ She bit her lip and turned her head away and after a moment Charlotte continued, striving for
her previous light-hearted tone.
‘That puts me in mind of something I forgot to mention before. Are you sure it’s such a good idea for you to come to Bath? I fear that a baking hot September might not be the best time for you to try the treatments.’
‘My dear.’ Elaine shrugged and pouted at Charlotte with a mixture of amusement and resignation. ‘How could I argue with my husband when he was so pleased with himself for making the arrangements? Even when he knows.… I’m sorry to leave you to brave the company alone, Char,’ Elaine broke off her sentence then smiled at the younger girl, changing the subject. ‘But I promised Kit faithfully that I would, under no circumstances, overdo things on our first night.’
‘Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in bed, Elaine?’ Charlotte had noted the violet shadows under her friend’s eyes, but she made the suggestion warily. Elaine rarely made any reference to her infirmity herself, nor did she tolerate any discussion of her health by others.
‘Probably,’ admitted the other woman, turning to smile and nod at her maid who was waiting for instructions. ‘Do you hear that, Jackson? I promise to go to bed shortly and with no fuss. In the meantime, Mrs Richmond will cluck over me just as much as you would yourself, while you get my bed ready for me.’
‘As you wish, ma’am,’ came the quiet response, followed by a quick frown in Charlotte’s direction. ‘I rely on you, Miss Char, if you’d be so kind, to keep her from excitement, it does wear her out so. I’ll be back directly.’ At Charlotte’s nod of reassurance the older woman left the room with a heavy tread and an anxious backward glance at her mistress.
‘Dear Jackson,’ Elaine was amused. ‘She can never forget that she was my nurse and has looked after me since I was a month old. I can tell she approves of you though, Char, because she insisted there was no need for you to bring a maid and that she could manage for us both. This is a mark of signal favour, I’ll have you know. And she calls you Miss Char, even though she is usually a stickler for the correct forms.’
She settled herself more comfortably on the chaise-longue by the window. ‘How fortunate that we have our own sitting room, I can lie here and watch the world go by whenever I wish. Now, do tell me about Agnes. I’m so glad she and Mr Benson returned in the nick of time for you to see her before our own departure. How did she seem? And was she disappointed not to be going straight to the vicarage?’
‘If she was, she made no mention of it.’ Charlotte grinned. ‘You know Agnes – she sees the hand of Providence in everything, though I suspect a few days in the company of her sister-in-law and the weeping willow may challenge even her pious resignation. No, what was preoccupying her more than anything was the fact that she had spent much of the honeymoon month recovering from her seasickness on the ferry crossing to Cowes, short as it was, and that even now, she still suffers from a recurrence of that same mal-de-mer every morning even though she is on dry land!’
She waited for her companion to digest this information and smiled in sympathy at the outburst of giggles.
‘Oh no, already? Poor Agnes, has she really no idea? Who would have thought Mr Benson had it in him! Did you say anything to her, Char? Surely someone should mention to her what she is really suffering from?’
‘I’d have said something, of course, had I not been coming away the very next day but as it was, I’ve left it to Lily who at least can sympathize with her, and to Lady Frampton who will apply robust common sense to any vapours that Melicent, the weeping willow, succumbs to upon hearing the news.’ As Jackson reappeared, wearing a look of determination, Charlotte rose and kissed her friend. ‘I’ll leave you in peace, dear Elaine, and go to satisfy my curiosity about our fellow inmates.’
‘Char!’ exclaimed Elaine in laughing protest. ‘You simply must not call them inmates, Waterloo House is not an asylum, you know. Remember one of Kit’s cousins stayed here in the spring of last year, which is how we knew of it. He recommended it to us as a most comfortable house with congenial fellow guests, an accomplished cook and an attentive hostess. Mrs Montgomery is a widow, I gather, and when she inherited this great barrack of a house, a year or so ago, alas with very little income, she hit upon this splendid idea of catering solely for invalids. Kit’s cousin jokes that she even retains her own medical practitioner, but that was just his fun, though he insisted that there seemed to be doctors at the door almost every day.’
‘I know.’ Charlotte paused at the door, with a mischievous grin. ‘You told me so, my dear, and I’m sure it’s all perfectly respectable, but I confess I’m intrigued at the prospect of a houseful of invalids, all here to endure some form of treatment. What in the world do you suppose they all talk about at dinner? Not too detailed a catalogue of ailments, I do trust.’
It was a new experience, Charlotte reflected, to enter a room crowded with strangers and not to feel a constraint, a nervous awareness of her situation, or at least, she thought with a wry smile, a little less constraint than usual. It was simply the height of unlikelihood that she would encounter anyone who had known her in Australia. It was another world, another life, so surely there could be no one in Bath who could point a finger and denounce her?
In spite of her bravado she experienced a moment of unaccustomed shyness and, biting her lip, she made her way across the dark gold-coloured carpet to where her hostess stood in anxious consultation with a stout gentleman in his late fifties.
‘Ah, Mrs Richmond, how do you do?’ Mrs Letitia Montgomery, a small, faded blonde woman of uncertain age and protruding blue eyes, was all gracious hospitality. ‘I was glad to hear that Mrs Knightley had decided to rest. I always encourage my guests to take things steadily in their first few days and an early night is by far the best course for her after a long journey, don’t you agree?’
‘Quite, quite,’ interposed the gentleman by her side. ‘Rest, that’s the key, soon have the lady feeling more the thing, hey?’
As Charlotte nodded politely in reply, Mrs Montgomery hastened to perform the introduction.
‘Do forgive me. Mrs Richmond, this is Captain Horatio Penbury, one of my most welcome regular guests.’
‘Yes, indeed.’ Captain Penbury bent his large red face over Charlotte’s hand, with a flourishing bow. ‘That’s Horatio St Vincent Penbury, at your service, ma’am, named of course after the battle of Cape St Vincent and its glorious victor, word having reached my father of the victory even as my mama was lying in.’ He nodded jovially across Charlotte to his hostess. ‘I’m afraid you must put up with me, as here I am again, to try the waters and the new treatments. I have a musket ball lodged inside me, don’t y’know,’ he confided to Charlotte in a loud whisper. ‘Fit as a fiddle most of the time, then, by Gad, sick as a cat. That was the war with the Americans, y’know. I was a midshipman; just a young stripling but I got my wound by an unlucky shot from the USS Chesapeake. That was in 1813, a long time ago. It happened during the engagement when we captured her from the Americans,’ he added proudly.
‘Quite so, Captain. Oh, Captain, please don’t sit on that gilt chair, it was left me by my great-aunt.’ Mrs Montgomery hurried Charlotte away from the abashed captain towards a man in early middle age, accompanied by an elderly man and a small girl. ‘Mrs Richmond, allow me to present Monsieur le Comte de Kersac, together with his son, M. Armel de Kersac and Mlle Marianne.’ A frown creased her brow and she fluttered at the younger man. ‘Oh, M. Armel, if you would be so good as to take your arm from the mantel? The Chinese vase by your elbow there was left me by my grandmama.…’
Charlotte dropped a decorous curtsy and made polite small talk with the two men while she scrutinized them under her lashes. The elder Frenchman was a short, spare man with an air of melancholy about him, while his son, who moved away hastily from the ornately carved brown and orange-streaked marble mantelpiece, was built on a much larger scale, and was a cheerful-looking man in his early forties. Both men spoke excellent English as did the little girl, who whispered that she was ten; she was built like her father, quite a tal
l child but fair-haired where his hair was brown, and her blue eyes lacked his twinkling humour.
‘Well, madame?’ enquired the elder gentleman. ‘Now that you see us, do you think that you will like us?’
‘I beg your pardon, monsieur,’ she blushed. ‘I didn’t mean to stare.’
‘No.’ He smiled at her kindly. ‘You were summing us up, were you not? I think you are used to making up your mind quickly whether you are in the presence of friend or foe – so tell me, I am curious. How have you classified us?’
His acute assessment startled her and she felt a sudden tremor of alarm. Surely I can’t be so transparent, she fretted but he touched her hand in a brief, gentle reassurance. ‘Pray do not be anxious, my child,’ he said quietly as he drew her slightly to one side. ‘It is merely that I recognize certain attributes. When one has been very much afraid,’ he added, in a low voice that was indistinguishable to anyone standing near them, ‘It leaves a mark that is unmistakable to a fellow sufferer.’ He nodded and moved away as their hostess continued her round of introductions, leaving Charlotte feeling shaken and intrigued, but also slightly alarmed, by his remark.
‘Here we have a neighbour of yours, I believe, Mrs Richmond.’ Mrs Montgomery presented Charlotte to a man with a thatch of very dark hair, who looked to be somewhere in his forties. A heavy, unbroken eyebrow fought a jutting chin for dominance of his face but the forbidding and rather ape-like appearance this might have suggested was belied by an expression of undaunted and cheerful optimism. ‘Mr Simeon Chettle, who has broken his journey home to Finchbourne to recruit his strength by taking the waters and trying the new medical treatments.’
‘You look surprised, Mrs Richmond.’ With a polite smile of enquiry Charlotte took the eagerly outstretched hand. ‘Indeed you may, for although I do habitually reside in Finchbourne, I have been touring the Continent for the last six months and the fatigues of the journey sent me here, to dear Waterloo House, before I take up the reins again.’
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