The Fortune-Hunter

by Julia Herbert

  “Certainly, sir, but it’s not much of a place.” Bartholomew was flattered to be asked and yet embarrassed.

  “No matter.” Without more ado Maldon found a pen and began to write the required note for His Majesty’s Paymaster-General.

  Miss Tyrrell was likewise writing a letter. As angry as Jeffrey Maldon when he left, she had snapped at her mother when that poor lady came downstairs in her best lace cap, intending to charm their guest.

  “He’s gone, Mama, so don’t trouble to make any arrangements about a special dinner for him.”

  “Gone? But ... what a short visit! I thought he would stay to dinner. When will he be back?”

  “Never, I imagine.”

  “Never?” Mrs. Tyrrell repeated faintly. “What do you mean, never?”

  “I have told him I don’t wish to see him again. I would rather not explain further, ma’am.”

  “Oh, if you mean that it embarrasses you to have him here after you have refused his offer of marriage, that’s not important, Amy.”

  “There’s more than that, Mama, I learn that he talked Papa into signing a document—”

  “A document?” her mother cried, alarmed. “What kind of document? A confession?”

  Amy came to her senses. It was utterly wrong to confuse and upset her mother, who never had a very strong grasp on practical matters. “No, Mama dearest, of course it is not a confession,” she said with vehemence. “Papa has nothing to confess to. You must believe that! He has done nothing wrong.”

  “But if you have sent Mr. Maldon away,” moaned Mrs. Tyrrell, “who will prove it?”

  Who indeed?

  It took Amy half an hour to soothe away the alarm she had caused, and when that was done she sat down to think what she ought to do. She had behaved very badly—she saw that now. She had confronted Mr. Maldon with an accusation of deceit and dishonesty because Uncle Pierce had put it into her mind; but now that she came to consider it she realised that Uncle Pierce was likely to be jealous of Mr. Maldon’s friendship with her father. She had been upset on Bernard’s behalf. But after all, if Mr. Maldon was to learn anything about what happened on the fatal night, he must surely make inquiries at Parall, the scene of the crime.

  When she came to review the quarrel she had just had, she had to admit, that what had hurt and stung was the phrase Maldon had used—the one about being kept dangling by Bernard. After that she had completely lost track of logic; she had simply been lashing out at him to punish him for what he had said. She had wanted to make him feel as foolish and small as that phrase had made her feel. “Kept dangling...”

  But it was true. She had had that thought herself more than once this summer, as the days went by and still Bernard didn’t declare himself. The best time for a wedding in the country was the summer. If Bernard didn’t ask for her hand before the end of September, the autumn rains and the winter snows would make it impossible to have guests at the ceremony, and that meant putting it all off for another year. Another year! She would have been twenty-one by then and still unmarried...

  That was why it had hurt so much when Jeffrey put it into words, she admitted to herself. That was why she had been so cruel.

  And then he ... he had taken his revenge...

  Well, of course, she would never, never speak to him again. Never. Even if he stood by what he said and refused to take her dismissal, she would never admit him to the house. Even if he succeeded in freeing her father from prison.

  If he intended to do so, she reminded herself. According to Uncle Pierce it would be to Jeffrey Maldon’s advantage for her father to stay where he was.

  Yet somehow she couldn’t believe that the indignant rejection of her charges had been mere acting. He had been deeply angry. She knew that was true, for her shoulders still felt the force of his fingers as he had seized her and pulled her towards him. Her lips still felt the imprint of his savage kiss.

  His reaction had been genuine. Ungentlemanly, barbarous, wrong—all those things, yes. But genuine. He had kissed her out of a desire to punish her for the hurt she had inflicted.

  This was a strange kind of logic, perhaps, but she found it convincing. And if it was true that she had hurt him by her accusations, didn’t it then follow that her suspicions about him were wrong?

  Yet there was the matter of talking her father into signing the power-of-attorney. Uncle Pierce was right when he said it was a way of profiting from the distress of the Tyrrell family. It was the kind of thing a clever fortune-hunter might think of. And he certainly had not mentioned it at any time during the previous day, though they had spent twelve hours in each other’s company.

  True, there had been the difficulties of Bryce’s poor driving to contend with, and the care of the carriage horses on the hard roads, and an argument with the innkeeper where they had stopped for refreshments. And when they reached home her mother had distracted his attention with her news of bands of Pegmen roving the neighbourhoods so that he had hurried away in hopes of finding the missing Stephen Boles.

  She wished now that she had greeted him with less frigidity at midday. He might have had some explanation of his actions to offer. Now it was too late. The scene that had occurred—the angry accusations on her part and the cold savagery of his revenge—all that had made a barrier they could never cross.

  All the same, she wished to know the truth about his power-of-attorney. So, since she was sending Bryce back to Winchester on a horse with some personal belongings of her father’s, she sat down to write. She included the inquiry about the power-of-attorney in a gently teasing way, so as not to let Mr. Tyrrell know what had happened.

  “Uncle Pierce is put out that you have given such powers to a young whipper-snapper like Mr. Maldon and begs to know whether he has lost your confidence? He is anxious in case you were persuaded into it while you were in distress and so, dearest Papa, a word of explanation that I could give to him would be a boon.”

  When Bryce had been dispatched on the pack-pony with home-baked pasties and her father’s favourite slippers, Amy wandered about the grounds in frustration. She wondered whether Mr. Maldon would be doing anything on her father’s behalf and if so, what? The main thing was to find Stephen Boles. But according to the servants, Stephen Boles had disappeared from Markledon. No one seemed to know where he had gone.

  She could go back to Parall, of course, and ask Bernard. But somehow she shrank from doing that. The old boy-and-girl affection seemed to have trickled away; now there was a strange distorted relationship between them, a feeling of protective love on her side, and on his, who knew what?

  Who else would know the whereabouts of Stephen Boles? If she could not ask at Parall, where else could she inquire?

  Then it came to her. Nancy! Stephen Boles’s sweetheart, the girl for whom he had bought the silk shawl. He had swindled the household accounts out of some money to buy a shawl for one of the kitchen-maids of the Manor House, but Nancy of course had fled with most of the other servants.

  She hurried back indoors and rang for her maid. The faithful Molly hurried into her bedroom, half expecting to hear that Miss Tyrrell had the vapours, for faith, ’twould be no wonder if she did, considering all that the poor soul had gone through these last few days!

  “Molly,” Amy demanded, “where has Nancy gone?”

  “Nancy?”

  “Nancy Saythe, the kitchen-maid.”

  Poor lady, thought Molly, she’s taken leave of her senses. Inquiring for a kitchen-maid, indeed!

  “Now, now, miss, don’t you worry your head about that,” she soothed. “Best if you lie down and I’ll bring you a posset—”

  “Molly, pray don’t talk to me as if I were a ninny! I want to find Nancy Saythe because she and Boles were hand-holding, were they not?”

  “Why, that’s quite true, Miss Tyrrell!”

  “So she may know where he is now, may she not? Therefore I want to speak to her. Where did she go when she got frightened away?”

  “As to that, she s
aid she was going to Miss Hilderoth in the village,” Molly said, looking doubtful. “She sews nicely, does Nancy, for a. kitchen-hand, but I doubt if she does it well enough for Miss Hilderoth to take her on.”

  Miss Hilderoth was the local dressmaker, a very handsome young lady who had come from London to set up shop in Markledon. All the local ladies who could afford it had their gowns made by Sarah Hilderoth. If Amy had been about to be a bride, she would have ordered her wedding-dress from that establishment.

  Certainly it sounded unlikely that Miss Hilderoth would take on Nancy Saythe, whose hands were rough from kitchen work and quite unfitted for the fine silks that were sewn in the workrooms there. Nevertheless, it would be worth inquiring; even if the dressmaker had sent her away, she might have some idea where Nancy had gone.

  “I shall go there at once,” Amy announced.

  “Nay, never say that, Miss Tyrrell,” Nancy gasped. “You daren’t show your face in Markledon at the moment, the feeling runs so high. One sight of you in the carriage and you’d have the mob around you—”

  “Then I shan’t take the carriage.”

  “But, it’s no better if you ride in, miss! They’ve only to see you and they’ll—”

  “Then they shan’t see me. Or at least they shan’t notice me, Molly! Come, we must find a way to change my appearance so that I don’t look like Miss Tyrrell of the Manor House. Let’s see if we have anything sober and demure in the wardrobe.”

  Molly was horrified, and more so when it was proved that even Amy’s least expensive gown had the cut and finish of a lady’s possession, so that it would be necessary to borrow a dress from the lady’s maid.

  “My dress, miss? You can’t be serious?”

  “Why not, Molly? We’re about the same size and height, and if I brush the powder out of my hair and wear a plain cap, who is to know I’m not a simple country girl?”

  Molly was of the private opinion that her mistress could never look like a simple country girl, but nevertheless went to her little room in the attics and brought back her best clothes: a dark brown wool gown, a muslin kerchief edged with English crochet, grey thread stockings with white clocks, a brown cloak with a hood and a pair of French gloves once given her by a suitor. Amy refused the gloves but donned the rest, added a pair of thick leather shoes, and set off on foot for Markledon.

  As she walked along the high road a man in a gig came trotting by from behind her. He slowed his pace a few yards ahead.

  “ ’Morning, sweetheart. Like a lift?” he called.

  It was the landlord of the Garland. He hadn’t recognised her, well though he knew her. She pulled the hood of the cloak yet further over her head and made a gesture of refusal, without speaking. He raised his whip in salute and went on.

  Miss Hilderoth’s shop was halfway down the High Street. At the moment that Amy entered the village, Jeffrey Maldon was riding out at the other side to head for Winchester. Had she looked up, she would have seen that tall figure on the black horse moving steadily away towards the north, but she was concentrating on not appearing nervous as she mounted the two stone steps outside the dressmaker’s and raised the door-knocker.

  A girl of about fourteen opened to her. “Tell your mistress I want her,” Amy said, without thinking that this wasn’t the kind of language expected from a “simple country girl”. The child, however, scurried away as bidden, and in a moment Sarah Hilderoth appeared from the back of the shop.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am,” she said, and then stopped short.

  They knew each other, of course. Amy had had two or three gowns made here. Miss Hilderoth stared at her but recovered quickly.

  “Why, Miss Tyrrell,” she said, “what do you want here?”

  It wasn’t exactly impolite, but it was certainly not the civility that Amy was accustomed to. She raised her eyebrows and, perhaps for the first time, really looked at Sarah Hilderoth.

  She was a truly beautiful woman. Taller by a head than Amy, she seemed about two years older. Her skin had the sheen of a pearl and something of its colour—clear and translucent. She dressed extremely well by standards that Amy didn’t admire—an abundance of lace, an over-elaborate hair-style, and many rings.

  The odd thing was that she was very tense; she showed a particular animosity and anxiety.

  “Miss Hilderoth, I’ve come to ask if you have Nancy Saythe working for you?”

  “Nancy? Yes, she’s here. What do you want with her?”

  “If you remember, she was in our employ. Most of our household staff have run away—where, I know not. But when I heard that Nancy might be here I thought I would ask her to come back.”

  “You’ll be wasting your time,” said Miss Hilderoth. “No girl in her senses will go back to the Manor House.”

  Amy controlled her temper in the face of this waspishness. “Let me at least ask her,” she begged. “We have almost no one to see to the kitchen ranges nor make the beds.”

  “And of course you’re too much the fine lady to do it yourself,” snapped Sarah Hilderoth. “Very well, I’ll send for her.” She rang a little silver bell, and the young girl appeared as if she had been crouching in terror behind the door. “Fetch Nancy,” she commanded.

  When she had gone Amy said in a conversational tone, “I’m surprised that her work is of high enough quality for you to—”

  “Leave me to mind my own business,” interrupted Miss Hilderoth, “and you mind yours.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to seem inquisitive.”

  “No, it’s simply that you can’t get used to the notion that you’ve no importance or influence any more, without your father to lord it over everyone as landowner. Well, it was time you learnt your lesson.”

  “I see,” Amy said, looking down to hide her heightened colour. It was very hard to have to accept treatment of this kind, and particularly from a woman to whom she had always been quite polite when she had her dresses fitted. She was shocked and puzzled by the gratuitous rudeness with which she was being addressed.

  The door from the back premises opened and the former kitchen-maid came in, a tall slender girl with fine eyes and a gentle expression.

  “Why, Miss Tyrrell! I couldn’t believe it when Betty said—”

  “How are you, Nancy? We have wondered how you were faring.”

  “Oh, I’m surely grateful to you for your interest.”

  “But not grateful enough to go back to the Manor House,” sneered the dressmaker.

  “Is that why you’ve come, miss? I fear I—”

  “Well, I did rather want to ask you something, Nancy. I very much need to speak to your sweetheart, Stephen Boles. Can you tell me where he’s gone?”

  “Stephen?” Nancy said in surprise.

  “Nancy has nothing to say to you on that score,” Sarah Hilderoth put in swiftly. “You misled me. Miss Tyrrell. You said you wished to speak to her about her employment.”

  “I didn’t say that was all I wanted to speak about—”

  “As to Stephen, he’s off to Poole Harbour, I’m thinking.”

  “Be silent, girl! Didn’t I just say you had nothing to tell her?”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Hilderoth, but it didn’t seem wrong to—”

  “Whereabouts in Poole, Nancy?” Amy put in.

  “Why, to one of the inns, I suppose.”

  The door opened once again and a man came in, speaking as he walked. “I heard the girls come down so I knew you’d got rid of her—”

  He broke off. He and Amy stared at each other.

  It was Bernard Gramont.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  How Amy got out of the place she could never afterwards remember. Embarrassment and pain blotted it all out of her mind. The next thing she knew she was walking fast down Markledon High Street with her cheeks flaming with distaste. She had forgotten to pull the hood around her face to hide her features, but no one hindered her or waylaid her. She reached the outskirts of the village, hurried on for another
ten minutes, and then, finding her legs giving way beneath her, she sank down on a milestone.

  She clasped her hands tightly in her lap and stared down at them. She didn’t see them—what she saw was Bernard’s face as he understood that she was still in the shop.

  “I knew you’d got rid of her.”

  He had been speaking about Amy. He had been skulking upstairs, waiting for her to leave. He would have been glad if she had been gone.

  All at once a thousand things became clear to her. His unwillingness to ask for her hand in marriage, his shallow affection, even the excuses so often made for him by his family: “Bernard will come later, he has business in Markledon.”

  Business? Yes, business at the dressmaker’s. An unlikely tale.

  The fact that he was there today showed how important to him was the companionship of Sarah Hilderoth. Amy had seen him at Parall, seen how genuinely miserable he looked, and heard how his mother depended on him: so if he came all the way to the village to see Miss Hilderoth it argued a deep need.

  Probably everyone in the neighbourhood knew. She felt certain that Mr. Maldon knew. Only Amy—poor blind fool—had been ignorant of the love affair between the son of Beau Gramont and the village dressmaker.

  Well, now she knew. Now there was an end of all the longing for Bernard to declare himself, the forward-looking to a happy married life with him. All that was in the past. She understood what she should have sensed months ago, if she had not been so wilfully dense. Bernard didn’t love her, probably never had. He had been fond of her, oh, yes—in the days of their childhood he had played with her and agreed that when they were grown up they would be married.

  But he had grown out of it. She had not—not until now, in this one painful step of seeing their relationship in its adult aspect.