The Five-Minute Marriage

by Joan Aiken

  Yr. affec. Mama.

  Delphie almost groaned aloud at the latter part of this letter, which filled her with consternation. Only too well did she know how far from lucky at cards Mrs. Carteret had always been, and more particularly during the period when she had attended Duvivier’s Salon, when she had lost a terrifyingly large part of their scanty income. If she were to fall into the habit of deep play at Lady Bablock-Hythe’s, the results would almost certainly be disastrous. Suppose that, instead of winning that hundred guineas, she had lost it! The idea was terrifying. Lady Bablock-Hythe had so little sense that Delphie did not at all depend on her protecting her simple friend from the temptations of gambling. Delphie resolved that they must remove from Brook Street as soon as might be.

  She now espied another letter, which had lain under her mother’s note. This one was franked from Chase, and was addressed in Gareth Penistone’s small black hand.

  My dear Miss Carteret:

  This is to inform you that my uncle’s funeral obsequies will be conducted in the Chapel here on Monday next Should you wish to attend, a bedchamber will, of course, be prepared for you at Chase. I shd also inform you that I have instructed my Man of Business to commence Nullity proceedings; knowing your invincible Dislike of me, I was sure that you would wish no time to be lost. Though I may say that this gives me no satisfaction, as I have learned to regard you with the greatest esteem & am most sincerely sorry for any hasty words to the contrary I may have let fall the other Night.

  Yr. cousin & sincere Well-Wisher, G.P.

  This letter astonished Delphie as much as the other had frightened her. She read and reread it six times at least, and was, indeed, so reluctant to lay it down that she kept it in her hand as she walked about the apartment and reflected.

  What ought she to do? Absently folding the letter into a small square, she held it tightly pressed into the palm of her hand.

  The thought of Mordred Fitzjohn’s savagely angry face came back into her mind. Had he been driving to Chase? She thought it very probable. The horses’ heads had been turned to the east He had looked really mad with rage—capable of any crime.

  Suddenly Delphie pulled out the small carpetbag which she had taken with her on her previous excursion to Chase, and began stuffing it with a few necessities. She tugged at the bellpull and instructed the servant who appeared to procure a post chaise to take her into Kent What a fortunate thing it was—a least in the present moment—that she had had this money from her mother!

  Then she sat down and dashed off a note to Mrs. Carteret

  My dearest Mamma:

  I have hired a Chaise & am about to post down to Chase on urgent business, for I have learned that the false Miss Carteret is gone there to make trouble, and also that the steward, Mr. Fitzjohn, is plotting Evil Designs against poor Mr. Penistone—Lord Bollington, I should say—and may also have gone there to do him harm. I hope somehow to put a spoke in their Wheel. I may remain for Great-uncle Mark’s funeral, which is on Monday. It would be a mark of respect. Please, dearest Mamma, do not be playing at cards too much, for you know that your luck is not always to be depended upon, and almost all our savings are gone. Pray give my kindest regards to Mr. Browty, and also to Lady Bablock-Hythe.

  Your loving Daughter.

  And she wrote one to Jenny:

  My dear Jenny:

  Acting on Mr. Swannup’s very kind and prompt apprisal of Mr. F’s wickedness and Miss C’s perfidy, I have decided to go to Chase and warn my Cousin.

  In haste, P.C.

  Now the servant came to tell Miss that the chaise she had bespoken was at the door, and carried down her bag for her. How quickly I am become used to having such services performed for me, she reflected as she tipped him, and handed him the two notes to deliver.

  The door slammed and the chaise whirled off. It was then five o’clock.

  “How long will it take you to get to Chase, in Kent?” she asked the driver. “If you go at your top speed?”

  He gave it as his opinion that with luck and rapid changes of post-horses, the journey might be accomplished in something over four hours.

  “I will give you double your fee if you can do it in less,” Delphie told him.

  “Very good, missie; we’ll see what we can manage!” he said, cracking his whip.

  Fortunately he had an excellent team, decidedly better than the usual run of hired horses, and Delphie was a light passenger. They made good time along the first stages of the turnpike road, though Delphie chafed at the inevitable delays when they were halted at tollgates, where, sometimes, the dilatory tollkeepers appeared to take forever to come yawning out and collect their fee.

  Meanwhile Delphie had an abundance of time in which to think, and think she did, so deeply that her brain at times seemed to be in a ferment. So Mr. Fitzjohn and Miss Carteret were in league—or no, not precisely in league, for their schemes seemed now to run counter to one another, but evidently at some time they had been in league. But who was the false Miss Carteret? And how had she come by Delphie’s birth certificate, which she had proffered so glibly to Lady Bablock-Hythe? Was this alone the basis of all her pretensions and claims to recognition? Then it occurred to Delphie that, according to Gareth, Lord Bollington had been paying for Miss Carteret’s education for the last twenty years—therefore somebody else must have perpetrated the scheme long before either Elaine or Mr. Fitzjohn were of an age to plan such villainy. Perhaps Fitzjohn had discovered her imposture and threatened disclosure? It seemed plain that he loved her, in his strange way—possibly marriage was the price he demanded for his silence. So perhaps, Delphie thought, that was why my first application, written during the winter, received so rude a rebuff. It probably never reached Lord Bollington at all! Mr. Fitzjohn received it, and instantly realized that the Miss Carteret in Bath was the false claimant. But she, it seemed, loved Gareth—or was she merely determined to have him for his rank and position and the money that went with it? Delphie was sure that, married to Gareth, she would give him a wretched time; at worst, it seemed, she was calmly prepared to murder him and return to Fitzjohn! If he could make good his claim to the title. And on what could this claim rest? Could it possibly be that Delphie’s grandfather had, in fact, married Prissey Privett in time for his two children by her to be legitimate? This could not be ascertained without recourse to documents, for Delphie was not certain when Mary, Lady Bollington, had died, or when Priss Privett’s son, the first Mordred, had been born. But if he was legitimate, why had he never put forward a claim to the title? It was all mysterious and inexplicable, thought Delphie, looking out with an absent eye at the green fields of Kent, and the lambs, now bigger and livelier than on her first journey past them. How long ago that now seemed! How disagreeable she had thought Gareth Penistone! And so he had been, in truth, she reflected, but now that she knew the cause, there were extenuating factors. She had not known then about the querulous Una, or the hapless Thomas, or the ten Palgrave children he was obliged to support; she had not known of his jilt by Lady Laura Trevelyan.

  At Maidstone the driver requested a ten-minute stop, so that he might have a rest, and a bite to eat. This seemed only reasonable, and Delphie readily granted his request; she herself felt the need of a little sustenance, for she had eaten a hasty, early breakfast before packing her own and her mother’s clothes in Curzon Street, and had taken no food since then.

  In a small side parlor she was accommodated with such cold meat as an inn larder usually affords, bread-and-butter, and a most welcome cup of tea. Looking from the window, as she sipped her second cup, and amusing herself by watching the white-smocked postboys bringing out the fresh horses and taking the tired ones off, she suddenly stiffened at seeing a familiar face—two! There was Miss Carteret, in the sarcenet pelisse and plumed hat described by Mr. Swannup, and there, with her was the dour-faced old nurse, Durnett.

  “We have no time to stop!” Delphie heard Miss Carteret declare in her loud, arrogant voice. “For all I know, Mordred
may be on our traces already. We have been too much delayed by that wretched animal’s casting a shoe. Put-to the fresh horses directly.”

  “Is there a side way out from this inn?” Delphie asked the potboy who brought her reckoning.

  “Sure, miss; down that pair o’ steps will take you into the lane as goes around to the stables.”

  “I am very much obliged to you!”

  In two minutes, Delphie had rejoined her driver, and warily slipped into the chaise on its far side, unobserved by Miss Carteret, who stood by a yellow carriage at the front of the inn-yard, impatiently waiting for her fresh horses. Delphie leaned well back as they passed Miss Carteret and hoped that her face could not be seen. Then she had a moment’s alarm.

  “Can you tell me which road we should take for Chase?” the arrogant voice demanded of Delphie’s driver.

  “Tell her the Hastings Road!” Delphie whispered.

  He did so.

  “But ‘twas a lamentable bit o’ misdirection, missie!” he remarked, grinning, as they left the streets of Maidstone behind them and were out in open country once more. “I dunnamany miles out o’ their way that’ll lead ‘em!”

  “I have my reasons for wishing to arrive at Chase ahead of that young lady,” Delphie said primly.

  “That were what I reckoned!”

  The new horses were not quite such fast goers as the previous team, but still they kept up a good steady speed, and, looking from time to time through the tiny back window, Delphie could see no sign of the yellow carriage coming after them.

  But where was Mordred? Had he, driving his much lighter curricle, and with only one person in it, already far outdistanced them, perhaps even arrived at Chase? Mordred was far more to be dreaded than Elaine; if he were really set on marrying her, to what lengths might he not be driven, in order to make sure that Gareth was out of the way?

  Dusk was beginning to fall. It was already eight o’clock and, after an unusually hot and brilliant day, more like July than May, a wrack of large pinkish-black clouds had arisen, covering half the sky, and, with the close and sultry temperature, promising thunder later. Indeed, one or two faint growling mutters could already be heard, far off, and presently there came a resounding crack, right overhead, which made the horses start and whinny.

  “Looks like ‘tis farin’ to be a bad night, missie!” called the driver. “Lucky we ain’t so far off now.”

  “You had better spend the night at Cow Green!” she called back. “I believe the inn there is quite tolerable.”

  “Hallo! Looks like there’s a cove on ahead as has come to grief,” he said after a few minutes. “There’s some kind of a hurley-bulloo up yonder, and I can hear a horse a-screaming something cruel.”

  As they came closer, the hurley-bulloo resolved itself into a shattered curricle, half in the ditch, and a desperately writhing horse among the tangle of wreckage. No wonder the poor beast screamed—part of the splintered shaft was sticking into its side.

  “I’ll have to put the poor nag out of pain, missie,” said the driver, slowing as he passed it. “I can’t abear to leave it like that.”

  “Of course you must not,” she agreed. “But how?”

  “With one o’ my brace of barkers,” he explained. “I alius carries ‘em loaded, case o’ tobymen, you know.” And, bringing his own team to a halt, he pulled a pistol from under the box, and stepped down into the road. “Reckon it were that clap o’ thunder caused this little upset,” he called back. “Made the nags shy, mebbe. There’s only one—likely the driver rid off on the other to get help.”

  Delphie, leaning from the window, wondered whether this shattered curricle was Mordred’s. The horse was a bay, as his had been.

  “I don’t like to trouble you, miss,” called the driver, “but would you mind holding the heads o’ my pair while I do this job? I’m afeared the shot may cause ‘em to bolt.”

  “Certainly I will,” said Delphie, dismounting. The task was no easy one, for the horses were already scared and sweating at the screams of their wounded companion; it was all she could do to keep them still as the driver held his pistol to the head of the hurt horse and discharged it.

  “Poor creature—how heartless of its driver to go off and leave it—” Delphie was beginning, when a voice from behind her said,

  “Well met, cousin!”

  She whirled around—and discovered with a shock of tenor that Mordred had appeared—where from? He must have come out of a field gate—and had climbed onto the box of her carriage, where, possessed of the driver’s other pistol, he was now holding it in a negligent manner.

  “What a fortunate thing that you came along!” he remarked coolly. “I was expecting my cousin Elaine but not, I must confess, your estimable self. You have quite a genius for turning up in the nick of time, have you not? Having failed to recapture my other horse, which had bolted, I was resigning myself to a long walk.”

  “What are you doing there—with that thing?” she cried indignantly.

  “Going to settle accounts with my cousin Gareth. He has stood in my way too long.”

  “What can you mean?” she said, trembling.

  “Oh, I shall not murder him! I am not such a flat as that! His death will be the result of a misguided wager—dear Gareth never could resist a wager!”

  “ ‘Ere! What’s going on?” demanded the outraged driver, who, walking back from the wrecked carriage, only now observed that his place had been usurped. “You come down off of there!”

  But Mordred, pointing the pistol at Delphie, said, “Stand away from their heads, cousin, or I shall be obliged to wing you in the arm—and it will not be an easy shot, with the horses so restive; I might mistake!”

  He held the reins in his left hand, and now swung their ends sharply over the horses’ backs, making them bound forward; Delphie was obliged to jump aside, or she would have been trampled.

  The driver let out a stream of the most lurid language Delphie had ever heard, and started to run after the chaise—but it was hopeless to try and catch it; in a few moments he desisted and came back to Delphie, panting and furious.

  “Was that cove known to you, missus?” he asked Delphie.

  “Oh, yes! He is a very wicked man! I would give anything for this not to have happened,” she said wretchedly.

  “So would I! It’s barefaced highway robbery! Where’s he taking my rig?”

  “Oh, to Chase, I am sure. You will probably find it in the stables when we get there.”

  “I had better! We got a five-mile walk afore that,” he said grimly, “and we’re a-going to be soused, for any minute now it’s a-going to pelt!”

  He was right. Huge drops of rain as large as crown pieces were beginning to plop heavily onto the dusty road, and the great black cloud had crept right across the sky. Another clap of thunder, much louder this time, pealed in the heavens as they set off walking along the road.

  All the driver’s good nature had vanished. He was hardly to be blamed, certainly, for his bad temper, but Delphie could have wished that he had a more stoic nature, for he grumbled incessantly all the way along the road to Chase, as the rain sluiced down on them and the thunder fulminated overhead. The storm, having apparently settled in the Chase valley, seemed to circle around and around without ever moving off; it was still thundering and lightning just as violently at the end of their walk, which took upward of an hour and a half, as it had been when they began.

  By the time they reached Chase darkness had fallen, but they were able to pick their way well enough by the lightning flashes, which followed one another with startling rapidity. Delphie thought she had never been so wet in her life. The water ran out of the tops of her boots, her pelisse was sodden, and her soaked cambric dress clung to her like a flypaper.

  “One thing,” she thought, thumping with her clenched fist on the oak door, and remembering her previous unwelcomed reception, “nobody could be turned away on a night like this!”

  “Let me take a hand at tha
t!” offered the driver, hammering lustily with the handle of his whip, “ ‘Tis likely with all the ruckus overhead, those inside can’t hear us!” as another shattering peal of thunder seemed to explode on the very rooftop.

  At last the door was pulled open and Delphie saw the amazed face of Fidd peering out at them.

  “Oh, Fidd, I am so glad to see you!” she exclaimed in relief. “You remember me—Miss Carteret? My—my carriage has had an accident—the driver and I have been obliged to walk the last five miles. We are excessively wet!”

  “Lor bless my soul, yes, miss, I can see that. Come in, miss,” he said, pulling the door wider. “And we’ll see about getting you dried off!”

  “Never mind me, for the moment! But perhaps you can take this poor fellow to a fire. Did—has Mr. Mordred arrived, in a post chaise? And Miss Elaine Carteret?”

  “Mr. Mordred come, miss; best part of an hour agone he got here, afore the storm grew so swallocky, an’ his cattle’s in the stable.”

  Delphie’s driver sighed with relief at this news.

  “But I dunno about no other Miss Carteret, miss; I never heard tell o’ none; nor Mr. Fitz ever said you was expected.”