by M C Beaton
Minerva was pacing up and down the Green Saloon in Lady Godolphin’s home in Hanover Square, desperately waiting for news. Lady Godolphin was in bed and likely to remain there until noon at least, and Minerva did not know if her ladyship had found out about the visit to St James’s Square.
All Minerva’s high standards had crumpled. Only let him live, she thought, and I will gladly become his mistress if he does not wish to marry me.
The sun climbed higher in the sky. He had kissed her passionately before sending her home in one of his carriages. She had stayed on his doorstep to watch him leave before departing herself, wondering if she would ever see him again.
The early morning post arrived with a letter from the vicar, telling of the generosity of Lord Sylvester and the Marquess of Brabington, and urging his daughter to come home.
And then Mice, the butler, was standing in the doorway announcing, ‘The Marquess of Brabington’.
Minerva turned chalk white. Something must have happened or he would not have sent his second. Also, although he was holding it quite well, it was plain to see that the Marquess was very drunk.
‘Servant, Miss Armitage,’ he said, making a very low bow and stumbling slightly as he did so.
‘Sylvester!’ cried Minerva. ‘Oh, tell me the worst. Don’t keep me waiting in this agony.’
‘He is well, ma’am, and sends his respects.’
‘Wounded?’
‘Goo’ grashus, no. Fid as a fittle, I assure you. Shot the gun out o’ Dubois’ hand. Marvelush, ‘slutely marvelush.’
‘Where is he at present?’
‘Dead to the world. Dead drunk, that is.’
‘Oh,’ said Minerva in a small voice.
‘There was somethin’ else I was to say, but I’m bleshed if I can ‘member. Good day to you.’
‘Wait!’ screamed Minerva as the Marquess lurched to the door. ‘Did he not give any other message?’
‘I’m sure he did, ma’am,’ said the Marquess swaying like a Lombardy poplar in a chopping wind. ‘But I can’t ’member for the life of me.’
And with that, he lurched out.
Minerva sat down very suddenly and stared at the floor.
He was safe.
And that was all right.
Fear clutched her heart. What had seemed like the love of a lifetime, a passionate noble giving of herself, now began to assume a sordid tinge.
What if he did not love her? What if she were pregnant? But he must love her. He had not said so, but his body and hands and mouth had. Her face began to burn.
But he should have called. Not sent his friend.
The butler appeared again and handed her a long sealed letter.
She broke the seal and crackled open the parchment. At first she could not really take in the contents. There was clearly the page out of a betting book. She stared at it in a puzzled way and then turned her attention to the accompanying letter.
‘Dear Miss Armitage,’ she read. ‘You may think Lord Sylvester Comfrey enamoured of you, but as you will see from the page which I took the Liberty of extracting from White’s Betting Book, you have been made the subject of a Vulgar Wager.
‘Be on your guard!
Yr Humble & Obedient Servant,
A Friend.’
Minerva looked slowly at the page of the betting book again. This time, the item at the bottom of the page seemed to leap out at her. ‘Mr F, Sir Y and Lord S do hereby wager 50,000 pounds to be paid to the one who succeeds in winning the prize of Miss A’s affections,’ she read.
She let the papers fall to her lap. Now Lord Sylvester’s generosity to her father seemed suspect. It would seem he had gone to great lengths to secure his prize.
But I gave myself to him, she told herself fiercely.
She shivered, feeling soiled and stupid and alone.
Someone knew about it. She had been made the subject of a wager, laughed about in the clubs.
All at once, she realized she had to get away, get back to Hopeworth. She did not want to see Lady Godolphin. Lady Godolphin was very much part of this hateful world.
There was only one letter she meant to write before she left.
Minerva arose and set about her business like a martinet. She packed only one small trunk. Fortunately, she had enough pin money left to pay for her travel.
She got a hack to the City, and from the City, the stage coach to Hopeminster, her slender resources only allowing her a place on the roof.
At Hopeminster, the landlord of the Cock and Feathers gladly agreed to supply miss with a chaise to take her to Hopeworth, saying her father would pay her shot on his next visit.
The day was dreary with a fine grey drizzle falling mournfully over the fields. Candles were being lit in the cottage windows as Minerva finally saw the squat tower of her father’s church.
The fatigue of the two day long journey had served to calm her. She decided to tell her father that she had been so delighted to get his letter that she had left on the spot. Fortunately, during her short stay in London, she had spent most of her pin money shopping for presents for her family rather than buying things for herself, and these presents made up the major part of her luggage, and would make it seem more like a planned departure.
Her mood swung from rage where she dreamed of confronting Lord Sylvester and throwing the sheet of the betting book in his face, and bitter sadness when she thought she would be pregnant and have no future other than the bottom of the River Blyne.
When she thought of the Marquess’s drunken state it all seemed part and parcel of that brutal world of men. Cock fighting, prize fights, and deflowering virgins, all a sport.
And to add to her burden of misery, her love and longing for him would not cease.
Perhaps she had never really known her father – always thinking of him as a bluff huntsman devoid of finer feelings.
But when the greetings were over and the presents exclaimed over and she had been hugged and feted and questioned by her brothers and sisters, it was the vicar who had led her off to the study, it was her father who had shut the door and had wordlessly held out his pudgy arms, folding her in a tight embrace, letting her cry, and not asking one single question.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The harvest was in and the chill winds of October swept across the brown fields. Red and gold leaves danced before the wind, branches tossed their arms up to the blustery sky where ragged clouds trailed curtains of rain over the county of Berham.
The whole countryside seemed in motion, and the vicar, from his sacrilegious perch on top of a table tombstone, could see Minerva’s scarlet cloak billowing about her as she walked towards the village.
Bit by bit, the vicar had coaxed the tale of Minerva’s indiscretion from her. He was at a loss as to what to do. In ordinary circumstances, he would have headed for London with his rifle primed and would have forced Lord Sylvester Comfrey to marry the girl.
But he was heavily indebted to Lord Sylvester for saving the family finances, and, furthermore, Minerva had made it quite plain that his lordship had been drunk and that she had thrown herself at him.
But he was at a loss to understand Lord Sylvester’s behaviour. The vicar prided himself on being a good judge of character and he could have sworn Lord Sylvester was not the man to bed with any girl of gentle birth unless he had marriage in mind.
He had not confided in anyone for he felt Minerva’s disgrace very deeply. But it made him ache to see her grow daily more spinsterish and withdrawn … She was not with child, thank the good Lord, but on a fair way to blighting her looks and her youth.
It was of no use unburdening himself to his wife, for Mrs Armitage would be guaranteed to have quite a dreadful Spasm. He worried the problem of the betting book over and over in his head like one of his hounds worrying a bone. He knew such bets were made. He had made similar bets himself, but in a sort of lighthearted way, and the female concerned had never learned of them.
It was unlikely that someone of Lord Syl
vester’s calibre would make such a bet with a couple of mushrooms like Sir Peter Yarwood and Hugh Fresne.
But his lordship’s very silence damned him. If his intentions towards Minerva had been at all honourable then he would surely have at least written.
All at once the problem seemed too heavy for one man. The vicar knew he would never enjoy the hunting season with such a burden on his mind. He decided to break his silence and visit Squire Radford.
The squire’s very presence was soothing thought the vicar, when, a few hours later he was sitting by the fire in the squire’s house, sipping the squire’s excellent port. The squire sat in an armchair facing him, his feet in their buckled shoes scarcely touching the floor.
‘Annabelle again?’ asked the squire, after studying his friend for some moments.
‘No,’ said the vicar. ‘It’s worse than that. Much worse. It’s Minerva.’
There was another long silence, broken only by the sonorous ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner.
‘Minerva left London very suddenly,’ ventured the squire.
‘I got this here letter from Lady Godolphin,’ grumbled the vicar, pulling a crumpled paper from his pocket. ‘She’s still going on about resuscitation.’
The squire raised his eyebrows, and then smiled. ‘I suppose her ladyship means “restitution” or more likely “remuneration”. In short, she wants her money back.’
‘And o’course she’ll have it but it does seem a great plaguey amount for a few gowns,’ said the vicar, returning the letter to one of his capacious pockets.
‘But that is not really what is troubling you,’ prompted the squire gently.
‘Well, no. See, Jimmy, it’s like this …’ And the much embarrassed vicar plunged into a long tale of Minerva’s fall from grace.
The squire listened patiently without interrupting once. At last the vicar finished and leaned back in his chair and mopped his brow with a handkerchief, looking hopefully at the squire for consolation or advice.
Squire Radford successfully hid his shock. He privately thought Minerva was a very lucky girl to still have a home, and that she had not been whipped and turned out of doors. But he was not a man to speak hastily and, after some reflection, he remembered all the girls of his youth who had fallen from virginity before they even reached the altar, but somehow everything had been hushed up and it had all seemed to work out in the end,
He turned over all he had heard about Lord Sylvester Comfrey in his mind. There was nothing he could remember which could explain his lordship’s vulgar bet and subsequent behaviour.
In fact the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that Lord Sylvester had been very deeply in love with Minerva. His generosity to the vicar was solely so that Minerva should be able to return home since she was not happy in London.
‘Lord Sylvester would not make any wager with such as Fresne and Yarwood,’ he said. ‘If it had been Lord Barding, I could have understood it. And this was sent to Minerva anonymously? Mmm. Do you have it with you?’
The vicar slapped at his capacious pockets and eventually found the page in a pocket in his tails.
The Squire searched among the clutter on the table next to his chair until he found a powerful magnifying glass. He studied the page carefully and then let out a sigh of satisfaction. ‘It was not Lord S,’ he said. ‘Someone altered it very cleverly. I think you will find it was originally Lord B.’
‘Here! Let me see!’ cried the vicar. He screwed up his small eyes and peered through the glass at the paper. ‘Dashed if you ain’t right, Jimmy! What a coil. But it still don’t explain Sylvester’s conduct. It explains Minerva’s.’
The Squire sank back in his chair and put the tips of his fingers together. There was a long silence. The clock ticked, the wind rattled the windows, and a log shifted and fell in the fire.
He thought about Minerva, and then about the two Minervas, the one rigidly held in, prim and proper, and the other, a wilful passionate woman who occasionally took over.
But Minerva was a woman and women, even intelligent ones, were apt to do the same stupid things given a certain set of circumstances.
He raised a gnarled finger and looked solemnly at the vicar.
‘I think you will find that there is one thing Minerva did not tell you …’
‘And that is?’ prompted the vicar.
‘That she wrote Lord Sylvester a letter. She was hurt and furious, you must remember. Tell me Charles, when did any hurt and furious woman not write a letter?’
‘But she would have told me …’
‘Not necessarily. Not if it was a really nasty letter that she was secretly ashamed of writing.’
‘Surely…’
‘Even genteel women can be very coarse when they are hurt. Take my word for it, Miss Minerva probably said some quite shocking things.’
‘Then all I have to do is tell her I know about it and get her to write and say she’s sorry.’
‘No, she may still deny it. Womanlike, she may privately think he should have ignored it if he really loved her.’
‘Well, bless me, what can I do?’
The squire gave an impish smile. ‘We, my dear Charles, will put our old heads together and write Lord Sylvester a letter – signed Minerva, of course – which will bring him panting down to Hopeworth.’
‘What if he doesn’t love her?’
‘Oh, I think he does. We have nothing to lose. You see, if we persuade Minerva to write a letter and Lord Sylvester does not reply, then she will be more hurt than ever. This way is much better.’
‘I don’t know if I can write all that sentimental twaddle,’ said the vicar testily.
‘Ah, we shall broach another bottle, Charles, and dream of our youth, and then you shall see …’
Lord Sylvester Comfrey had been in London for the Little Season and was thankfully preparing to leave for the country. He was taking the Marquess of Brabington with him.
The Marquess had been on the point of rejoining his regiment in the Peninsula, but before he could set sail he was struck down with a violent fever, and had only just recovered.
He found the delights of London as dull as Lord Sylvester had found them and the one was as anxious as the other to shake the dust of the city from his heels.
The Marquess sometimes thought that Sylvester looked more like a man who had endured a grave illness than he did himself. Lord Sylvester had been curt and withdrawn ever since Minerva had left London. The Marquess knew she had sent his friend a letter and that the contents of that letter must have been quite dreadful to judge by the stricken look in Lord Sylvester’s eyes.
Lord Sylvester had asked the Marquess what he had said to Minerva, whether he had told her of his, Lord Sylvester’s love, and the Marquess had said guiltily that he could not remember a single thing about his visit.
Lord Sylvester himself had celebrated so freely and wildly after his duel that he had fallen asleep after sending the Marquess on his mission, not wanting to appear before his beloved in such a drunken state. He had not awoken until much later in the day and by that time Minerva’s letter had been awaiting him.
She had said he disgusted her, that the very thought of what she had done with him nauseated her, and she never wanted to see or hear from him again.
Blind fury at her had carried him through the first weeks before cold hurt and misery had set in.
He had behaved very badly during the Little Season. He had been rude and haughty and had snubbed nearly the whole of London society. And how they had loved him for it! Lord Sylvester was every inch an aristocrat, a man of the ton.
He was weary of life and weary of himself.
His man announced that his travelling carriage had been brought around to the door.
‘Come along, Peter,’ he smiled. ‘I can promise you some good shooting and fishing, and the air of the country will set you up no end.’
Lord Sylvester wrapped himself in his many-caped benjamin and climbed onto the
box of his travelling coach.
‘You may drive, Peter,’ he said. ‘I have a deal of correspondence here.’
The Marquess nodded and picked up the reins.
They were edging their way through the press of traffic in the Strand, when Lord Sylvester clutched his friend’s arm, and cried, ‘Hopeworth, Peter! At all speed. She loves me!’
The Marquess glanced down at the parchment in Lord Sylvester’s hand.
He suddenly felt better than he had done in months.
He had a vision of blonde hair and blue eyes and a bewitching smile.
‘Hopeworth it is!’ he grinned.
Lord Sylvester would have pressed on during the night, but the Marquess persuaded him to rack up for the night so that they could be dressed in their best when they presented themselves at the vicarage.
Lord Sylvester sat by the inn fire, reading his precious letter over and over again. The Marquess was only allowed a glimpse of it. It was written in a strangely old-fashioned spidery hand with all the s letters appearing as f.
‘It obviously leaves you in no doubt of her affections, Sylvester,’ he said.
‘Not a bit,’ smiled his friend. ‘The dear girl! Only see where her tears have blotted the page.’
The squire had considered that bit a stroke of genius as he had sprinkled a few drops of water on the paper before sending it.
They were up early in the morning and soon setting a fast pace for Hopeworth.
The vicar was in his study when the two men called. The Marquess, who had already met the family, was disappointed to learn that Annabelle was at Lady Wentwater’s but elected to sit and amuse Mrs Armitage and the rest of the family while Lord Sylvester went to see the vicar.
The vicar cheerfully gave Lord Sylvester his permission to pay his addresses to Minerva.
‘Wrote you a letter, heh?’ said the vicar. ‘And she never said a word about it to me. Well, if you will take an older man’s advice, my lord, I wouldn’t mention that here letter. Much more diplomatic to say you came on your own without any inducement. Let’s just put it on the fire.’
‘But it is a marvellous letter! A wonderful letter! No, no, my dear sir. I will not mention it, but I certainly mean to keep it among my dearest treasures.’
