Belinda Goes to Bath

by M C Beaton

  ‘When we left, one of the constables, who was an old man, talked to me like a father and said it was wrong of me to drink so deep and frighten the poor old lady.’

  Belinda and Hannah exclaimed at this and Hannah was all for going back and tackling the authorities, but the marquess said he had Belinda safe and was not going to let her go again. He did not want to see any other relatives.

  ‘You’ll have to see ’em,’ said Hannah. ‘You’ll have to take Miss Earle back to London and ask her aunt and uncle.’

  ‘I have decided I am not going to see them,’ said the marquess. ‘If Belinda is returned to London, I am forced into a long courtship!’ He turned to Belinda. ‘I have my travelling carriage. What say you to a Gretna marriage? We can return as man and wife and be married properly in church at our leisure.’

  Belinda clasped her hands. ‘I would like that of all things.’

  ‘But if her aunt and uncle do not approve of the marriage, Miss Earle will not gain her inheritance,’ protested Hannah.

  ‘A fig on her inheritance,’ said the marquess. ‘You may come to Gretna with us if you wish, Miss Pym.’

  But Hannah thought of being alongside such an amorous pair and shook her head. ‘I will take the stage back to London. But I will see your aunt and uncle, Miss Earle, and give them a piece of my mind.’

  Hannah went out to the inn courtyard the following morning to say goodbye to the happy couple. Belinda was sitting on the box beside the marquess. Hannah opened her mouth to protest and then reflected that they were to be married, albeit unconventionally, and so appearances did not matter any more.

  Belinda sat silently beside the marquess until the city of Bath was left far behind. Then he slowed his horses and smiled down at her. ‘I wonder if I shall ever forget Miss Pym,’ said Belinda.

  ‘No need to forget her,’ said the marquess. ‘I have her address. She may dance at our wedding – that is, when we are properly married.’

  ‘You are so good, Richard,’ sighed Belinda. She had decided not to mention the famous or infamous Lady Devine. Hannah had told her last night that was all in the past and gentlemen did not like to be reminded of old amours.

  ‘Good, am I?’ The marquess stopped the carriage and took her in his arms. He fell to kissing her passionately until his much-goaded tiger bawled out, ‘Get a move on, me lord, or we’ll never get to heathen parts’ – heathen parts being Scotland.

  * * *

  Hannah, too, considered the marquess a very good man. She returned to the room she had shared with Belinda to find he had left a letter of thanks and a purse of gold for her. She walked back out into the sunny morning, and bought a very dashing bonnet in Milsom Street, plus a cashmere shawl and a new umbrella, a replica of the one she had broken hitting the footman. She booked a ticket on the stage-coach that was to leave the following day. On her return to the Pelican, she sat down at a desk in the coffee room and wrote a brief letter to Sir George Clarence, telling him of the day of her return, and reminding him of his promise to show her the gardens. Hannah wanted his reply to be there, waiting for her, when she got home.

  She felt very rich now that the marquess’s gold was added to her legacy. She would perhaps ask Sir George to put it in the bank for her. But then she changed her mind. She would use up the gold first on her travels and save her legacy. Besides, it gave her a feeling of comfort to think of all those gleaming sovereigns reposing at the bottom of her large reticule.

  She tried on her new hat, called a Grecian bonnet. Hannah thought it so becoming that she took herself to the Pump Room for tea and enjoyed herself immensely.

  As she climbed aboard the stage-coach next day to set out for London, she scanned the faces of the other passengers eagerly, but decided that her adventures were over for the present. There were an enormously fat lady with a thin little husband, a doctor and a sailor, and four noisy bloods on the roof, who promised embarrassment rather than adventure on the road home. Fortunately for Hannah, the bloods drank themselves into a state of oblivion before Devizes was reached and the whole journey to London passed without incident.

  She found herself quite breathless with excitement as she climbed the stairs to her flat above the bakery in the village of Kensington. But when she unlocked the door and went inside, there was no letter there. She descended to the bakery to learn with a sinking heart that there had been no post for her at all.

  Hannah waited a whole week. At last she felt so low in spirits that she called on Belinda’s aunt and uncle and gave them a piece of her mind.

  ‘I do not understand,’ wailed Mrs Earle after her maid had brought her out of the swoon Hannah’s news had caused. ‘A marquess! Why should she run away?’

  Hannah told them roundly of all Belinda’s adventures, ending up with her treatment at the hands of her great-aunt. ‘So I suggest,’ ended Hannah, ‘that you write to Baddell Castle and tell the new Marchioness of Frenton how very sorry you are!’

  Feeling slightly more cheerful, and more hopeful, Hannah returned to her flat. Surely that precious letter would be there by now. But it did not arrive. She felt the time had come to set out on her travels again. But surely Sir George would write. Another long week passed, a week during which Hannah Pym began to feel like a presumptuous servant who did not know her place, expecting someone as grand and handsome as Sir George Clarence to pay her any attention whatsoever.

  The Marquess of Frenton propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at his wife, who was lying in the bed beside him.

  She was awake and looking up at the bed canopy with a vague stare.

  ‘Thinking of me?’ he said in a teasing voice.

  ‘No,’ replied Belinda, ‘I was thinking of Miss Pym.’

  ‘Darling and dearest, we have just travelled to heaven and back this night and all you can think about is Hannah Pym!’

  Belinda stretched her naked body and smiled up at him.

  ‘I was thinking how nice it would be if Miss Pym married Sir George Clarence.’

  ‘Clarence? Old stick who used to be in the diplomatic corps?’

  ‘Possibly. It is all very romantic, you see.’ Belinda told her husband of Hannah’s rise up through the servants’ ranks and then of that legacy. ‘And Sir George took her to tea at Gunter’s, and he has promised to show her the gardens at Thornton Hall on her return.’

  ‘Romance and Miss Pym do not mix. She is always practical. She thought we would suit very well and she was right, for there is more to marriage than bed, and you enchant me even when you are fully dressed.’

  ‘Did Lady Devine enchant you?’ asked Belinda, forgetting Hannah’s good advice.

  ‘She amused me and I her for a little while. That is all.’

  ‘Are you sure that is all?’ asked Belinda.

  ‘Have I not just said so?’ he demanded angrily. ‘I believed that fairy tale of yours as related by Miss Pym about the footman, and that was hard to swallow, believe me!’

  ‘It was all true,’ said Belinda wrathfully. ‘You are a pig and a beast. You didn’t believe me at all. You only pretended to.’

  ‘I am going to get dressed,’ he said in a flat voice. He swung his legs out of bed. Belinda surveyed his naked back in dismay. Tears started to her eyes. Their marriage was over before it had begun. She gave a choked sob.

  He immediately turned around and then got back into bed and gathered her into her arms. ‘I am a brute, Belinda,’ he said softly. He caressed her naked breast and smiled down into her tear-filled eyes.

  ‘Do not let us quarrel ever again, Richard,’ said Belinda.

  ‘Not ever,’ he promised fervently.

  But of course they did, violently and bitterly, from time to time, and so had a normal and happy marriage.

  Hannah roused herself from her despair. Cold frosty nights and sunny days made fine weather for travelling, and the roads of England stretched out from London, holding excitement and adventure.

  But before she left again, she would walk out of the village a
nd along the Kensington road and look in at the grounds of Thornton Hall. Looking at the grounds and the improvements would give her something to take with her on her next journey. She would not go in through the gates but just stand and look.

  She walked along in the sunlight, feeling better than she had since she left Bath. She was approaching the place where she had worked all those long years, the place he now owned.

  Soon she saw the familiar roofs of Thornton Hall rising above the bare branches of the trees. Trees! Hannah stopped and stared. For there had been no trees at Thornton Hall, only acres of grass kept down by a flock of sheep. Mrs Clarence had wanted a garden and had started a rose garden at the back of the house. After she had fled, Hannah had done her best to keep it in order, just in case Mrs Clarence came back, but Mrs Clarence had not come back, and gradually the weeds had encroached on the rose garden.

  She walked more quickly now, until she was standing before the familiar iron gates. She looked through them in awe. An avenue of lime-trees marched all the way up to the house. There seemed to be men working everywhere – men digging over the ground, men planting – and there, supervising the work, stood the tall figure of Sir George Clarence.

  All Hannah’s newfound lightness of spirits fled. He had not troubled to reply to her letter. She turned sadly away.

  Something made Sir George look down the long avenue. He saw the figure of a lady at the gates, and as she turned to leave, he thought he recognized those hunting shoulders, square and sharp-edged. He gave an exclamation and said to one of the gardeners, ‘Run to the gates. There is a lady wearing a Grecian bonnet who has just left. Catch up with her, and if she be a Miss Pym, bring her back with you.’

  Hannah trudged along. She did not want to go travelling again. How she had dreamt of telling him of her latest adventures. Now she had no one to tell. She felt old and alone and friendless.

  ‘Miss Pym!’

  Hannah swung around.

  A gardener came running up to her. Her gave a jerky bow and asked, ‘Be you Miss Pym?’

  ‘I am she,’ said Hannah.

  ‘Sir George wishes to speak to you, mum.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Hannah, not knowing that at that moment her face had become as transfigured by love as Belinda’s had been when the marquess told her he loved her.

  By the time she returned to the gates with the gardener, Sir George was waiting for her, his bright-blue eyes studying her curiously. ‘What is the meaning of this, Miss Pym?’ he cried. ‘I am anxious to show you the gardens. Why did you not enter?’

  ‘I did not think I would be welcome,’ said Hannah, suddenly as shy as a young girl. ‘I wrote to you, sir, but you never replied to my letter.’

  ‘But I am just returned from the north. I have been visiting an old friend. You are not the only traveller, Miss Pym. I came straight here. But now you are here, let me show you what we are planning.’

  ‘How did you get those trees to grow so quickly?’ asked Hannah, while she took rapid mental inventory of her appearance. Grecian bonnet bought in Bath, latest fashion, very good. Dark-brown printed linen ‘two-piece’, not Mrs Clarence’s, but bought from a dressmaker in Green Street, who had made it up for a lady who had gone abroad and showed no signs of returning, so Hannah had been able to purchase it for very little. Fashionable. The brown linen was patterned with tiny leaves of red, white and greeny-brown. It had a high-waisted jacket with a matching frill and long sleeves ending in a frill almost covering each green-gloved hand. Her shoes were of green calfskin with a small heel, and she wore stockings in the new shade of olive green. She longed for the courage to loop her gown over one arm to display a leg, as the young ladies did, for Hannah was proud of her legs, but guessed rightly it would be considered unbecoming in one of her years.

  ‘I had them put in fully grown, a whole avenue of lime-trees,’ said Sir George. ‘And come over here, Miss Pym. We are digging an ornamental lake.’

  ‘So you plan to keep Thornton Hall?’

  ‘I do not think so,’ said Sir George. ‘Gardening is my passion, and when the gardens are finished, they will add considerably to the value of the house.’

  He led her through the gardens in the sunshine, describing plants and bushes, and Hannah listened in a happy daze, barely hearing what he said, aware that he was talking to her as he would talk to an equal. She was enjoying looking at his high-nosed face, his silvery-white hair, and his eyes, which were as blue as the cloudless sky above. There was a smell of warm, newly turned earth. A thrush sang on a swaying branch and Hannah turned her head quickly away to hide the fact that her eyes were full of happy tears.

  ‘So, now,’ he said finally, ‘we must have tea and hear your adventures. The caretaker’s wife is poorly at the moment, but I have my carriage and there is always Gunter’s, is there not, Miss Pym?’

  Oh, thank heaven for Gunter’s, thought Hannah, sitting beside Sir George in an open carriage as they bowled through Hyde Park toll. Gunter’s, the confectioners in Berkeley Square, was one of the most fashionable rendezvous in London.

  ‘Now,’ said Sir George when they were facing each other over a lavish spread of tea and cakes, ‘tell me your news.’

  Hannah’s odd eyes flashed green. ‘Once upon a time,’ she began, and Sir George settled back to listen to her tale with every appearance of a man prepared to enjoy himself.

  And what a tale it was, reflected Sir George in amazement. There were the singing Judds; the carriage in the river; the beautiful Belinda, for Hannah did now remember Belinda as beautiful; the handsome marquess; and the wicked Penelope. He sat there, his tea forgotten, the cakes uneaten, as the story unwound, ending with the terrible Lady Bellamy and the flight to Gretna.

  ‘Well, by Jove,’ he exclaimed when she had finished. ‘I really think you should stay in London, Miss Pym. You attract adventures like a magnet. You are a brave and resourceful matchmaker if ever there was one. Surely you have had your fill of adventures now?’

  Hannah shook her head. The wicked thought flashed through her mind that she would stay in London for the rest of her life, if only she could sit with him like this for half an hour a day. But she dreaded boring him, dreaded the day when he might consider he was becoming too friendly with this ex-servant of his brother. As yet, Hannah believed she was not in love with Sir George. She admired him greatly, she basked in the warmth of his interest, but that was all.

  ‘So where shall you go next?’

  Hannah looked bewildered. ‘I have not thought about it,’ she said, remembering those long days filled with misery waiting for that letter that never came.

  ‘The Portsmouth road is a good one,’ said Sir George, calling for the waiter to take away the pot of tea, which had grown cold while he listened to Hannah’s adventures, and bring a fresh pot.

  ‘Portsmouth!’ Golden eyes looked at him. I have it, he thought, amused. Miss Pym’s eyes are blue when she is sad, green when she is excited, and golden when she is happy.

  ‘That is at the sea, is it not?’ asked Hannah.

  ‘Of course it is. A famous port which has seen many kings and queens. Robert, Duke of Normandy, landed there in 1101, bent on an argument with his brother Henry as to who should wear the crown. Richard the First gave the town its first charter. And at Portsmouth in the thirteenth century, I think, the first oranges were landed in England from a Spanish vessel as a present for the Castilian wife of Edward the First.’

  ‘I have never seen the sea,’ said Hannah.

  ‘Then I hope you arrive in fine weather and not in a fog.’

  ‘And what will you be doing, sir?’ asked Hannah.

  ‘I shall lead my usual idle life, going to my club, working on the gardens, travelling to see old friends.’

  Hannah wondered if any of the old friends were ladies but did not have the courage to find out.

  He began to talk of his travels while he had been in the diplomatic corps. But although he had travelled widely in foreign countries, he did not seem to have
had any wild adventures such as Hannah Pym had experienced travelling on the English stage-coach. Hannah listened to his voice. She wished she could take home something from Gunter’s to remind her of this day. Chip a piece off the table, take a saucer – something, anything, to tell herself in later years that she had not dreamt it all. Then she noticed that the waiter had put an extra teaspoon beside her saucer by mistake. It was a small silver spoon stamped ‘Gunter’s’.

  Hannah covered it with her handkerchief, and when Sir George lifted the lid of the teapot to see if there was any tea left, she slipped that spoon into her reticule.

  They talked for another hour, and then Sir George remembered he had been invited to dinner and must go home and change.

  He offered to drive her to Kensington, but Hannah said she would walk to the White Bear in Piccadilly and purchase a ticket for the Portsmouth coach.

  He walked her to the corner of the square, swept off his hat, and kissed her gloved hand. And then he said the words that Hannah had prayed he might say.

  ‘Do not forget to let me know when you next return, Miss Pym. I shall not be going out of London for the next few weeks, so I shall be here to receive any letter you may send. Do take care and do not become involved in any more dangerous adventures.’

  ‘I am sure I shall have a very quiet journey,’ said Hannah. ‘I did not tell you, but the return journey from Bath was boring.’

  He laughed and said, ‘You will soon be content to stay in London once the Season begins.’

  ‘I am afraid the London Season will not affect me, nor I it,’ said Hannah.

  He looked at her in surprise, as if remembering for the first time that day that this lady was his brother’s former housekeeper. ‘But you must sample some of the delights of the Season, Miss Pym. Tell you what – you let me know when you are coming back and I will take you to the opera.’

  Hannah curtsied low. ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘I shall look forward to it.’

  He watched her as she walked off. He felt she should not be walking about London unescorted. Then he remembered his appointment and hurried off.